Blog 4

Posted by: shibli6 on: February 13, 2012

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This week in class we went farther into the history of the Prophet’s history and got as far as his arrival to Medina. We also split into groups and discussed the personal and community goals of religion as well as the problems. I thought the excersize  was really interesting because it showed what different people primarily think of religion as and the distinction between organized religion versus personal spirituality.

I think the readings we had due were also a little challenging in terms of the large number of names and terminology used . Especially in Glimpses of Muhammad’s Medinan Decade. It is very confusing to me how historians have pieced together his life if they are so reluctant to rely on the sources from that time period because of a social and political reasons. I agreed with the author when he said though the different version are confusing it also helps reveal a lot about the social and political context of the times which can also really help in decoding Muhammad himself.

I recently read an article about how a writer named Hamza Kashgari had to flee Saudi Arabia because he wrote tweets about the Prophet Muhammad that upset many people. I think that while it is important for Muslims to respect their prophet it also does not mean one should be faced with the death penalty. In the prophets time he had many enemies and many of them slandered him but he never took aggressive action towards them. I think by making a huge deal over Mr.Kashgari’s posts that the Saudi government is doing more harm than good because its not like all the fuss and threats of the death penalty are going to make him love the prophet more. In terms of promoting censorship though its probably doing a really good job because he is being made an example for others of what might happen if they disrespect the prophet in Saudi Arabia.

In response to confused banana I think that you’re post about Osama bin Laden’s children was very interesting. Maybe he told them not to follow jihad because he only knew jihad in one sense of the word, and that is through fighting for Islam. Osama bin Laden was probably really narrow minded in his interpretation of Islam and the negative repercussions he faced from following his version of Islam are probably what caused him to say that to his children, if the story is in fact credible.