that’s because in past, we never had so many people like Munkireen-e-hadeeth, Ahmadies, Parvaizees, Ahl-e-Quran etc etc. It’s the wrong teaching of such people who took away the real Islam from the soul of the Ummah. Islam, as collectively, has almost vanished; the leftover are individuals. As long as we continue to declare such people in the fold of Islam, we won’t ever be able to make history rather we will become history 
This topic interests me a lot, so I am splitting it from the other discussion, so as not to derail that one.
Ok, so your point is that the present lot of muslims is "corrupted" by "Munkireen-e-hadeeth, Ahmadies, Parvaizees, Ahl-e-Quran etc etc" that is the main reason why muslims do not hold any prestige in the world right now (paraphrasing slightly).
Your point is well taken, though my view is that even during the life of the Prophet (Peace be Upon him) and right after him, there were immense challenges facing the ummah. There were non-stop ghazwas during his life time, and then the fitnas of fake prophets, perople refusing to pay zakaat and internal political struggle that were rife throughout the early days. By some accounts, three of the first four khalifas were assassinated.
So that means, muslims still rose to the challenge despite immense problems staring them at their face. What made them work? And what is missing from the present lot? I believe it has more to do with complacency and bad leadership than anything else.
Feel free to provide your input.
There was a clear understanding of such people among the mainstream ummah. And as I said, they were never declared among the fold of Islam as is done today by many so-called muslims who have one line to say: "Who made you judge this and all, Let Allah be the judge." So such people were never able to corrupt the thoughts and beliefs of muslims.
That's all.
The reasons for rise and down fall of muslims were the very same as the reasons for rise and down fall of any people eg when people begin to feel comfortable with what they have and stop promoting their ideas with the same vigour and zeal as when they start out, the unity of purpose no longer holds true and also that gives time to the opponents to realise their mistakes and reunite and return the favour. For much more detailed explanation, one needs to read what I have written HERE
muslims downfall reasons r many....our biggest problem was 4 things
1 money
2 women
3 upper class poor atitude
4 lack of modern knowledge
take out history and u will know wht the hell i m talking abt..another important aspect was lack of islamic and modern knowledge and not realising the powers of non muslims...jews hindus and christs always remained busy in trying to get any point from where they can start downfalling muslim governements...another important aspect was tht upper class people who always had very close relation to "gora people" and christians jews aalways used money women to satisfy them and let them to remained their servant...islam also came into fire due to tht religious shia sunni qadiyanis fight.....muslims never reaslised the actual power of bloody jews and they did not follow islamic teachings wellll...now i think situation is better then last 1960 or 1970 as now islam worst enemy qadiyanis have been called as non muslims..plenty of muslims r now very well educated and also they have weapon of islamic knowledge..plenty of muslim counrtries have come intio being...people have now realise te bloody atitude of hindus americans jews and now people r much more mature then last 50 or yyears back muslim people
The only reasons I see are:
1-Muslims were never as ignorant as we are now
2-Most of us dont think of ourselves as Muslims, we are either shia or sunni or wahabbi or some other sect.
3-No modren education, which was one of our strongest point in history.
4-Uneducated mothers. : )
Ive been reading a book called “Islamic History: The Rise and Fall of Muslims” By Saeed Akbarabadi. It discusses the reasons for muslim failure, quite interesting.
Sects, Bad leadership, Women, uneducation are all factors but the main reason has been a moral decline. Muslims no longer obey the commands of Allah :swt: and follow the example of the messenger :saw:. Its that simple.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Anwaar Qureshi: *
that's because in past, we never had so many people like Munkireen-e-hadeeth, Ahmadies, Parvaizees, Ahl-e-Quran etc etc. It's the wrong teaching of such people who took away the real Islam from the soul of the Ummah. Islam, as collectively, has almost vanished; the leftover are individuals. As long as we continue to declare such people in the fold of Islam, we won't ever be able to make history rather we will become history :-)
[/QUOTE]
C'mon guys,,,, today Islamic countries are the most backward countries in the world. If it was not for the oil they would also be the poorest countries. But the Muslims keep recalling the great scientific luminaries of the so-called “golden age” of Islam. They name great minds like Zakaria Razi, Abu Ali Sina, Ibn Rushd, etc who have contributed so much to the science and human understanding and pose the questions that have become cliché, “If Islam was wrong, could these great men not have noticed it?” “Isn’t it enough proof of the truth of Islam that so many great minds have been Muslims?”
However, the truth is that these men, though born within Islam, were not Muslims.
”Zakariya ar Razi (865-925) for example was perhaps the greatest freethinker in the whole of Islamic world. He was one of the great physicians of all times. He wrote over two hundred books on a wide variety of subjects. He is the author of the monumental encyclopedia al Hawi, on which he worked for fifteen years. Ar Razi was an empiricist, who instead of following the standard procedures dogmatically carefully recorded the progress of his patients, and the effects of the treatment on them. He wrote one of the earliest treatises on infectious diseases—smallpox and measles.
Almost all of Ar Razi’s philosophical books are destroyed. His views on religion in general and Islam in particular earned him public condemnation for blasphemy. Only bits and pieces of his refutation of revealed religion are left in a refutation of his book by an Ismaili author. From this, it is clear that the greatest mind of the Islamic golden age was not sympathetic towards Islam at all. Here are his audacious thoughts on religion:
“All men are by nature equal and equally endowed with the faculty of reason that must not be disparaged in favour of blind faith; reason further enables men to perceive scientific truths in an immediate way. The prophets—these billy goats with long beards, as Ar Razi disdainfully describes them—cannot claim any intellectual or spiritual superiority. These billy goats pretend to come with a message from God, all the while exhausting themselves in spouting their lies, and imposing on the masses blind obedience to the "words of the master." The miracles of the prophets are impostures, based on trickery, or the stories regarding them are lies. The falseness of what all the prophets say is evident in the fact that they contradict one another: one affirms what the other denies, and yet each claims to be the sole depository of the truth; thus the New Testament contradicts the Torah, the Koran the New Testament. As for the Koran, it is but an assorted mixture of ‘absurd and inconsistent fables,’ which has ridiculously been judged inimitable, when, in fact, its language, style, and its much-vaunted ‘eloquence’ are far from being faultless. Custom, tradition, and intellectual laziness lead men to follow their religious leaders blindly. Religions have been the sole cause of the bloody wars that have ravaged mankind. Religions have also been resolutely hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The so-called holy scriptures are worthless and have done more harm than good, whereas the writings of the ancients like Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Hippocrates have rendered much greater service to humanity.”
“The people who gather round the religious leaders are either feeble-minded, or they are women and adolescents. Religion stifles truth and fosters enmity. If a book in itself constitutes a demonstration that it is true revelation, the treatises of geometry, astronomy, medicine and logic can justify such a claim much better than the Quran”
The next great luminary of the Islamic world is Abu Ali Sina, known as Avicenna in the West, his “major contribution to medical science was his famous book al-Qanun, known as the "Canon" in the West. The Qanun fi al-Tibb is an immense encyclopedia of medicine extending over a million words. It surveyed the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources. Due to its systematic approach, formal perfection as well as its intrinsic value, the Qanun superseded Razi's Hawi, Ali Ibn Abbas's Maliki, and even the works of Galen, and remained supreme for six centuries" (1) This book was taught as the textbook to the students of Medicine in the University of Bologna until the 17th Century.
“Avicenna's philosophy was based on a combination of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. Contrary to orthodox Islamic thought, Avicenna denied personal immortality, God's interest in individuals, and the creation of the world in time. Because of his views, Avicenna became the main target of an attack on such philosophy by the Islamic philosopher al-Ghazali and was even called apostate.”( 2 )
Next is Al-Ma'arri, (973-1057) the greatest Syrian poet. He referred to religion as "noxious weeds" and called it a "fable invented by the ancients”, worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses. Ma’arri’s contempt of all religions including Islam is clear from the following verses.
"Do not suppose the statements of the prophets to be true. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The "sacred books" are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce."
-- Al-Ma'arri, poet, 973-1057
The biggest reason is due to the new found oil based power of the Wahabis.
The comments in the thread show the very nature of the 'Ummah' these days-blame everyone else for the faults in us- . It makes the prophecies of the AnHazoor (saw) very true that one day his Ummah will be like that of the people of Israel who will oppose the prophets of God and then blame others for their own misdeeds.
For a system so supposedly superior, it is hard to stomach why it didn;t suceed. that is why the blame displacement. The natural result is :who did this to us?" It must have been someone else because the pious lot were promised milk and honey.
In my expert opinion, it is the non-evolution of ideas and practices that was the ultimate demise. Unable to adapt to the concept of nation state, expanding trade or goods adn more important services, anachronistic gender roles, inability to question religious mandates, all have contributed to this downfall.
There is a simple concept of human wisdom. Human wisdom is a cumulative process, it doesn't need to be rationalized in religious terms to have a go at it.
Now give women, wine and money and buy faith. They built numerous splendid mosques they also built marvelous palaces for their own. They do care women a lot and marry them some time keep them feed them please them but they do not see women in Ethiopia dieing with hunger.
To solve their domestic problems with their brothers they call mushrikeen into their houses who decide their future. They are happy with them they share women and wine with them. They go to casino and do gamble, drink wine sleeps with women.
These are our leaders. And you expect them to be like
Tariq Bin Ziaad,
Sultaan Slah Uddin Ayyubi,
Khalid Bin Waleed,
King Noor Uddin Zangi
Check the character and then talk.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ulti Khopri: *
Now give women, wine and money and buy faith. They built numerous splendid mosques they also built marvelous palaces for their own. They do care women a lot and marry them some time keep them feed them please them but they do not see women in Ethiopia dieing with hunger.
To solve their domestic problems with their brothers they call mushrikeen into their houses who decide their future. They are happy with them they share women and wine with them. They go to casino and do gamble, drink wine sleeps with women.
These are our leaders. And you expect them to be like
Tariq Bin Ziaad,
Sultaan Slah Uddin Ayyubi,
Khalid Bin Waleed,
King Noor Uddin Zangi
Check the character and then talk.
[/QUOTE]
It is not....
Tariq Bin Ziaad,
Sultaan Slah Uddin Ayyubi,
Khalid Bin Waleed,
King Noor Uddin Zangi
Instead it was people like, for example, Omar Khayyam. He was one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers, and poets of Iran whose Ruba’iyat (quatrains) are translated into most of the languages of the world and who has earned a universal recognition by everyone. Khayyam was an epicurean philosopher, scornful of religion and in particular of Islam.
Edward Fitzgerald sums up the delightful nature of Omar and his philosophy thus:
"...Omar’s Epicurean Audacity of thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own time and country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed, and whose faith amounts to little more than his own, when strips of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide.”
Khayyam did not believe in any other world except this one. He was more concerned to enjoy the simple pleasures of life than confused world of the unknown. He was an agnostic par excellence “preferring rather to soothe the soul through the senses into acquiescence with things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be.”
Here are some examples Omar’s quatrains translated by Fitzgerald
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry:
‘Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.’
The absence of the revolution of ideas and practices while the West went through a revolution that involved all areas of society. The start of the Age of Enlightenment coincides with the fall of Muslims. The Age of Reason, The Renaissance, The Reformation and the Scientific Revolution were stages the west went through that the Muslim world has yet to attempt.
The west went through these philosophical and intellectual movements that covered economic, political and cultural theories. The goal was to understand this world and man's purpose without being limited to ancient interpretation of scripture. To understand this world it was necessary for them to leave behind the ignorance, superstitions, irrational fears and blind, unquestioning faith that dominated the pre-modern western society.
That type of diversity is necessary to develop and spread new and different ideas and practices and the non-reformed Muslim world discourages diversity. My theory is that the time is coming for this revolution among Muslims if they follow a similar timeline as the western (Christian) world.
Your feelings are reasonably useless Seminole. There is precious little that your ages of reason and reform did beyond getting the western world intellectually at par with the Muslims. Since then though, we have let ourselves go a bit. Its the case for rejuvenation in our case, not reinvention.
AQ, the premise for your arguments, that somehow alternate interpretations of Islam from the 'mainstream' have caused its downfall are absolutely, and without question, ridiculous. You need to bear in mind that you should not assign collective stupidity to every single Muslim individual by saying that we are unable to actually focus on intellectual pursuits (where we have predominantly failed over the past few centuries) while realising that someone else might believe differently from us, even if you suffer from it.
And that, is the principle cause of our fall from grace. Decadent rulers, divisive people who channeled their religious zeal into hatred and witchhunts instead of innovation and thought, an energenised west, the lack of will to cope with new external challenges.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Seminole: *
To understand this world it was necessary for them to leave behind the ignorance, superstitions, irrational fears and blind, unquestioning faith that dominated the pre-modern western society.
[/QUOTE]
Blind unquestioning faith is what dominates many of the posts in this forum.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ravage: *
Its the case for rejuvenation in our case, not reinvention.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry to disagree, but at this point it is re-invention. It has been several hundred years since Muslim glory. And even the Golden Age (1000 years ago?), while heads above the rest of the world at the time, still never achieved the heights of today's western society. There are systems, cultures, practices, biases and a pervasive lack of freedom of thought that are in place that cannot be brought back by a snap of the fingers.
^ err..Heads above Europe not the rest of the world. It is like getting all excited about a 10% GDP growth when your last accomlplishment was -20%
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Seminole: *
Sorry to disagree, but at this point it is re-invention. It has been several hundred years since Muslim glory. And even the Golden Age (1000 years ago?), while heads above the rest of the world at the time, still never achieved the heights of today's western society. There are systems, cultures, practices, biases and a pervasive lack of freedom of thought that are in place that cannot be brought back by a snap of the fingers.
[/QUOTE]
More like 600.
I was speaking specifically wrt the renaissance. Western civilisation at the end of the middle ages was roughly at par with the Muslim world, except at that point we started going down.
Whether reinvention or rejuvination…we will have to wait for a couple of hundred years more. The Kafirs are coming baby and they are bringing Hell with them. :k: