discipline posted:
This is a really good article ahahaha

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/sunnah.htm

Twentieth-century Western art is not a subject for which we Muslims have much time. The alert among us are conscious that it neatly represents the decline of the Western Christian worldview and its replacement first with the titanic fantasies of the Renaissance, those absurd nude figures urging us to consider the human creature as sufficient unto himself; and then, when two world wars convinced the Western elite that the human creature left to his own devices was unlikely to create his own paradise on earth, the grotesqueries of the modern period. Today, one of the best-known of British artists is Damien Hurst, famous for exhibiting a sheep floating in formaldehyde. Hardly less famous are Gilbert and George, two middle-aged homosexuals in grey Marks and Spencers suits, who paint vast canvases using their own body fluids. The winner of the 1998 Turner Prize, the most prestigious gong in the British art world, was painted with the excrement of an elephant. Perhaps this is why we Muslims find modern Western art particularly disagreeable and resistant to our contemplation: if art is the crystallisation of a civilisation, then to amble along the corridors of the Tate Gallery is to be confronted with a disturbing realisation. Christianity, when it was taken seriously by the cultural elite, produced significant works, which Muslims can recognise as beautiful, despite the inherent dangers of its love of the graven image. Christianity was sapped by the so-called enlightenment; and now that the enlightenment itself has run its course, the Western soul, as articulated by its most intelligent and most respected artistic representatives, has shifted its concerns to the human entrails. From the spirit, to the mind, to the body - and now to its waste products: a depressing trajectory, and one from which we avert our gaze. But it is immensely instructive, nonetheless, to visit art galleries just to observe the consistency of the decline. It serves as a reminder not only that we dislike the modern world, but also that we don’t like disliking it. We would rather feel that there existed some authentic connection between our worldview and that of the Western elite: but such a link appears no longer to exist. It is not that we are extreme. It is not we who destroyed the bridge. We are simply holding to the norms generally recognised by our species for 99% of its history. It is the West that is extreme, that has grown strange, that seems to have gone mad.

lmao didnt you really like grayson perry though

jools posted:
man thats some ridiculous roger scruton shit hahaha

Lets just say I'm really glad I didn't meet you in Ramallah

loyellthecat22 posted:
i don't think i want to convert to islam but i'd like to be able to read and write arabic or persian and then sit around writing calligraphy all day in a bad, unsteady hand? or maybe i should focus on the calligraphic arts of my own native alphabet....

http://www.zakariya.net/about/becoming_a_calligrapher.html

loyellthecat22 posted:
i don't think i want to convert to islam but i'd like to be able to read and write arabic or persian and then sit around writing calligraphy all day in a bad, unsteady hand? or maybe i should focus on the calligraphic arts of my own native alphabet....

no no, learn classical chinese instead, then you can go around translating buddhist sutras and avadanas about poop gods

babyfinland posted:
where do you live

youll probably want to avoid salafis or mosques that are obviously catering to a certain ethnic community (unless you belogn to that community of course)

dublin; ill probs go this one http://www.madina.ie/mosque.html which i think is run by pakistani sufis.

also i put a lil app in my phone to remind me of the prayer times which i thinkll help

crustpunk_trotsky posted:
no no, learn classical chinese instead, then you can go around translating buddhist sutras and avadanas about poop gods

its me, shennong. im the poop god.

tpaine posted:

aerdil posted:

babyfinland posted:

aerdil how does this strike you

It's hard to believe that you find this kind of rationalization intellectually substantive. His first point dodges the point by pseudo-pychoanalyzing the speaker of the argument, that he only asks because something "bad" happened to him and he must blame something. None of this really applies to the rest of what his argument, but I guess he just wanted to get it out there to show just how cowardly and degenerate the atheist critic is.

This philosophic justification is even worse. The first point he belabors by invoking the concept of submission doesn't do much to alleviate the criticisms of the logical contradiction between the existence of evil and god as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. The master-slave dichotomy doesn't rectify this at all. If anything it makes it worse, as he/she after all is our creator, knowing already everything we will decide to do, and goes ahead with the plan anyway knowing the kind of absurd, cruel, unjust, and painful world it'll result in. The slave morality it engenders is a whole other ethical argument, but I'll let Nietzsche speak for himself elsewhere as I'm more concerned about the simple logical contradictions involved here.

The implicit point of Free will that causes all evil that is existent in the world likewise has its flaws. First, it ignores the natural evils and pains that exist, and have existed, long before primates ever walked the earth. Certainly human decisions can amplify those evils like "promiscuity" (I suppose making sex such a natural and pleasurable elements of human life is just yet another devious "test"), but I'd argue things like disease itself shouldn't exist if god is omnibenevolent & all merciful, there's other tests to determine character.

And of course the argument that free will absolves the problem of evil still contradicts with the idea of god as omniscient. These simple contradicitons of course have a rich history in theology, Islam especially, but I've yet to hear good arguments that account for all of them.

And, about the mention of this world as being a "test" ... We discussed this earlier, but the absurdity of creating a world such as this for a long cosmic test is fairly self-evident. At this point usually the idea of god being unknowable, and how dare an ignorant pitiful slave human question his ultimate plan, comes to the forefront; but I think the spirit of Candide answers this idea better than I.

And even granting the state of the universe as it is, I'd also consider the punishment that supposedly brings justice in an afterlife to be problematic. It seems cruel and capricious to me considering the pressures and environment that the world applies to human decision making. I suppose god may take that into account, but at the end of the day he/she is the one who created the human destined for the fiery depths of Hell, knowing full well that the human will end up there.

Another speaker brings up that atheists merely cry foul at the world for its lack of "Fairness". I don't particularly believe the world needs to be intrinsically "fair" - after all I'm not the one posting an all-powerful all-good God. This remains a problem in most monotheistic theology. Certainly humans should aspire to make the material conditions that we control as fair as possible, however.

Well, I feel as lame as Dawkins now so thanks for that but whatever. Islam and religion in general just isn't intellectually believable to me at its very core. Obviously there are fabulous insights to be had, theology is quite interesting to me, and I have no real animosity to religion or godhavers. I do get upset however by the condescending attitude that the case for god and theology like Islam is airtight and unquestionable. And, in terms of politics, religion in general seems to have a tendency to be more reactionary than revolutionary, and obviously more concerned with Idealism than materialism. There are exceptions like liberation theology, but even then the ideological justifications given are more intellectually reasonable through simple Marxist analysis rather than the idea that Jesus certainly would've fed the poor.

Bleh.

owned

gyrofry posted:

Lessons posted:

im the sentient rock