just so you don’t think it’s only muslims and christians who like to impose unnecessary strictures on daily life, this just in from ha’aretz:
the latest halachic ruling banning the use of elevators on the Sabbath shocked residents of the Tovei Ha’Ir retirement home in Jerusalem.
Most residents at this institution, which caters to the religious and ultra-Orthodox, received news of the rabbinical edict with indifference.
Tovei Ha’Ir residents have been using elevators on the Sabbath for years – this is the only way they can get from their rooms on the upper floors to the dining hall and synagogue.
One of the retirees, a Haredi man, barely concealed his sarcasm when he responded, “What changed suddenly? What was kosher until now is suddenly treyf?”
if you’re not familiar with the concept of a shabbat elevator, it’s basically a way of using a lift without pressing buttons. this, according to many people, both jewish and non-jewish, is what is known as “cheating”. personally, i disagree with that position, as i believe G!D Wants us to use our brains and work within the system that was Revealed to us at sinai and if this means our ingenuity allows us to exploit loopholes, then as it says in the famous story of the “oven of achnai“, i believe G!D Laughs: “My children have defeated Me“. anyway, as far as i’m concerned, if you start making the sabbath into a total pain in the arse, then that can only lead to contempt for Torah and halakhah – and rabbinical teaching. when will these people learn to deal with those of us that don’t live in their box? what on earth are they thinking? do they want us to end up like the kara’ites, sitting in the dark on shabbat because we can’t use timeswitches?
AAARRGHH. what a way to start the new year. the only glimmer of light is that what passes in the haredi world for rumblings of plausible deniability and discontent may yet have begun…
27 Comments
If only my (Muslim) community would take such a sane and mature stand about similar matters – this is my prayer.
Good post.
I suppose one example from the Muslim community might be the seemingly endless generation of mind-numbingly silly and restrictive fatawa.
I am a bit of a collector of what the 16th Century Humanist and Protestant Reformer, Sebastian Castellio described as the follies and vanities of theology. A rich source of ludicrous religious injunctions from Islam may be had at the “Islam Questions and Answers” site run by the Saudi nutjob and bigot shaykh, Muhammad Salih an-Munajid.
Now just when you thought it could not get any more absurd, the worthy shakyh discusses the permissibility of eating mermaids. He pontificates, inter alia:
“Many of the fuqaha’ mentioned mermaids and differed on the ruling concerning them. Some of them said that they are permissible (to eat) because of the general meaning of the evidence which says that whatever is in the sea is permissible. This is the view of the Shaafa’is and Hanbalis, and is the view of most of the Maalikis and of Ibn Hazm and others. And some of them regarded it as haraam because it is not a kind of fish. This is the view of the Hanafis and of al-Layth ibn Sa’d. ”
The shaykh concludes:
“The correct view is that nothing is excluded from that, and that all the sea creatures which can only live in water are halaal, alive or dead, because of the general meaning of the verse – i.e., “Lawful to you is (the pursuit of) water game and its use for food” [al-Maa’idah 5:64].”
So, next time you sit down to a fine meal of seafood and your host dishes up roast mermaid, you can tuck in with great gusto, safe in the knowledge that mermaid is halaal.
Bon appetit!
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/103991/mermaids
Abu Faris clearly al Munnajad was asked the question and so answered it.
The ludicrousness comes from the asker not the one answering.
Just shows how Islamic jurisprudence covers every eventuality and human action possible. And Muhajjad said they were halal (not that you Spitooners care about halal and haram) so its not really restrictive.
Looks like they have taken a page from the Salafi nutcases and their South Asian foot soliders who are too insecure to assert their true identity – ya akhi.
bananabrain:
Rabbis are just as susceptable to judges in secular courts to making idiotic rulings, whether they are Orthodox or Reform. One of my favourite jokes is about someone creating an issue just so as to let his friend see what an idiot the rabbi asked to weigh in on the matter would decide before departing the community.
Every eventuality????
Are you for real?
Mermaids do not exist, you lunatic.
i’m quite impressed with “mermaids are halaal”, that is quite mad. however, i do note that the guy was lenient and permitted it – i bet that wouldn’t have happened in our community. i need to find out if there’s anything equivalent for us based on an impossible (as opposed to improbable) situation.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Abu Wanabe Arab
Their true identity being Sanātana Dharma – the religion of their forefathers- now say Om Shanti and shut up Dalit. And dont come near our well again . You’ll pollute it.
Abu Wanabe Arab
Im no fan of Munajad but how is going to an Arab scholar for a fatwa “losing your identity”?
What about believing in an Arab Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wasalaam ? You probably believe that is “losing your identity”.
And have a word with Faisal Gazi- that fvcker has not one but two Arab names!
Abu Wanabe Arab
I couldnt agree more Abu. I was trying to marry a British Bengali girl to get a UK passport – she was a total Arab sellout. When I demanded she give me dowry as is the Bengali way she told me in her religion Islam I had to give HER a dowry. What a traitor to Bengali culture she was. She also refused my conditions from true Bengali identity that she remain a widow after I die and she never divorce me no matter how bad I treated her.
She also refused to worship me or to touch my feet. She said it was “shirk” or some such Arab word. She refused my order to only bear sons saying her Prophet (I think his name was Muhammed something) only had daughters and he said whoever has daughters and treats them well and doesnt discriminate against them vis a vis sons will go to Paradise. This is totally against Bengali culture! She even refused to follow subcontinent culture and abort any female foetus quoting her holy book (which is written in Arabic NOT Bengali) specifically condeming it.
I HATE these Arab sellouts!
Why do people assume that a guy from Saudi Arabia knows best. Just because this is where Islam began, it doesn’t mean that all scholars from there are somehow superior or that they know better? This is as absurd as saying that the Kurds should be put in charge of liberating Jerusalem because Salahuddin Al-Ayoubi was a Kurd.
bananabrain
The fact you believe that you numbering 14 million (with a small minority actualy following the religion) from a world population of 6 billion are “God’s children” (since you are a monotheist you mean it metaphorically) to the exclusion of all others is far more grotesque and offensive than anything ever posted on this website.
Spittoon are such hypocrites. They castigate Muslim groups for their exclusivism whilst support the most hidebound ideas in Orthodox Jewish theology such as these.
Orthodox Judaism OK
Orthodox Islam Not OK
If a Salafi was to say “only my small group is going to jannah” theyd (rightly) condemn them. If a Muslim were to say “only us Muslims (1.4 billion) are saved theyd freak. But an Orthodox Jew saying much the same is OK !
The Quran says about attitudes such as these
62:6-8
6 قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ هَادُوا إِن زَعَمْتُمْ أَنَّكُمْ أَوْلِيَاءُ لِلَّهِ مِن دُونِ النَّاسِ فَتَمَنَّوُا الْمَوْتَ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ
7 وَلَا يَتَمَنَّوْنَهُ أَبَدًا بِمَا قَدَّمَتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ ۚ وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ بِالظَّالِمِينَ
8 قُلْ إِنَّ الْمَوْتَ الَّذِي تَفِرُّونَ مِنْهُ فَإِنَّهُ مُلَاقِيكُمْ ۖ ثُمَّ تُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَالِمِ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ
6. Say: “O ye that stand on Judaism! If ye think that ye are friends to Allah, to the exclusion of (other) men, then express your desire for Death, if ye are truthful!”
7. But never will they express their desire (for Death), because of the (deeds) their hands have sent on before them! and Allah knows well those that do wrong!
8. Say: “The Death from which ye flee will truly overtake you: then will ye be sent back to the Knower of things secret and open: and He will tell you (the truth of) the things that ye did!”
———
18 وَقَالَتِ الْيَهُودُ وَالنَّصَارَىٰ نَحْنُ أَبْنَاءُ اللَّهِ وَأَحِبَّاؤُهُ ۚ قُلْ فَلِمَ يُعَذِّبُكُم بِذُنُوبِكُم ۖ بَلْ أَنتُم بَشَرٌ مِّمَّنْ خَلَقَ ۚ يَغْفِرُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ وَيُعَذِّبُ مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَلِلَّهِ مُلْكُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَمَا بَيْنَهُمَا ۖ وَإِلَيْهِ الْمَصِيرُ
5:18 18. (Both) the Jews and the Christians say: “We are sons of God, and his beloved.” Say: “Why then doth He punish you for your sins? Nay, ye are but men,- of the men he hath created: He forgiveth whom He pleaseth, and He punisheth whom He pleaseth: and to God belongeth the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between: and unto Him is the final goal (of all)”
So now we know where Arab and Muslim antisemitism comes from. It’s hard-coded into their doctrine.
Yeah Eton criticising Jewish people believing they are superior to non-Jews is “anti-semitism”.
Ah, here come the brain-dead MPAC and iengage hordes…
Actually, Eton, it may be something far older than the Qur’an. One speculation that I have been working on for some time is that much of the traditions of anti-Semitism in the Near East may have origins in a deeply-held hostility towards Jews widely exhibited in the late Classical, Hellenistic and especially Byzantine Near East.
The Emperor Constantine was a notorious anti-Semite and the records of the early Koine Greek-speaking Church Fathers are replete with some fairly terrifying examples of Jew-hatred.
There were major pogroms against Jews in both the ancient Patriarchies of Antioch and Alexandria – and both the Coptic Orthodox Church and its Syrian Orthodox sister church in the Oriental Orthodox communion, together with Byzantine/Chalcedonian Orthodox churches (such as the Greek Orthodox communion) appear to have spent much of the past millennium and an half using the word “Jew” as an insult in their interminable, internecine conflicts with one another.
Even today, in a still in-print Coptic Orthodox account of the Copts’ split with the main Orthodox communion in 451 CE , the term “the Jew” is given as the nickname of a pro-Byzantine Syrian prelate, together with the gloss that he earned this nickname as a result of his simony and duplicity. This is written without a shade of condemnation for such a racist epithet.
One might conclude from this – at least provisionally – that if anyone “hard-wired” anti-Semitism into Arab culture, it was a Greek-speaking Christian religious hierarchy with a yen for smells, bells and imperial purple.
Clearly neither Blue nor Muslim have heard the Syrian joke where three big-bearded old shaykhs are sitting about tussling over some abstruse theological point when the clouds darken and a giant voice is heard to boom from above:
“BUT I MEANT…”
At which point, they look up, shake their fists, interupt and shout back:
“And WHO asked YOU?”
Get it, Blue and Muslim?
No, of course you don’t; and that’s the real pity.
Might be an idea worth running past the Palestinians – after all they’ve not been too successful.
muslim:
like i don’t know who you are, as usual.
please show, using a quote from me (as you obviously know me soooo well) exactly where i believe that non-jews are not “G!D’s children”. of course, you’ll also be able to point out where in the jewish sources it says that i ought to believe that. either do this, or shut up.
yes, that must be why i wrote the OP and tagged it “obscurantism”.
we don’t have such a conception of heaven and hell. not only jews “go to heaven” in any case – as you will be able to discover without much difficulty, the “hasidei ‘umot ha-’olam” or “righteous amongst the nations” have always been considered in jewish law as being entitled to what we term “a portion in the world to come”, whatever that actually means.
yes, of course there are jews who think they’re “superior” to non-jews. there are people who think like this in every ethnic, national or religious group in the world. they are known as “imbeciles”.
i would certainly go along with this – by the time the Qur’an arrived, jew-hatred was already endemic in the newly christianised world.
abu faris:
that joke is pretty much what happens on BT bava metzia 59b, as referenced above.
b’shalom
bananabrain
eton rifle
The Jewish notion that they are superior to non Jews is hard wired into their doctrine more like
ali:
what i said to “muslim”. *where* is this hard-wiring? show me, because i haven’t seen it. and i’ve been studying my bloody religion a bloody long time now.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Ali = Muslim = Munir = blah = deranged paranoid troll
oh, columbus!
the guy has so many different aliases it’s like he’s trying desperately to drum up support from himself. it’s somewhat schizoid i feel.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Banana Brain
great maybe you could tell that to Spitton and their zionist fellow travellers who promote works by non-Muslims telling us what Islam is and isnt rather than by Muslim scholars
Posting under different aliases is clearly schizoid – Im sure Sid/Faisal (Ibn Khaldun/Effendi) will agree
“Posting under different aliases is clearly schizoid – Im sure Sid/Faisal (Ibn Khaldun/Effendi) will agree”
Tell us about it Ali, Muslim, Munir, blah, bogus, Inayat, Bunghole, Waallah, wankschaft, cruikshank, deep throat, slick rick, curb crawler, Abu Khan, Mahmoud etc.
@bananabrain
Thanks for the reference – intriguing… I shall do some delving.