Arabist~enwiki

Welcome to Wikipedia

Hi Arabist, welcome to Wikipedia and thanks for your edits to Islamization. As I commented on the article talk page, your edits were thoughtful and certainly improved the article so I don't think you should worry about accusations of vandalism. --Lee Hunter 18:30, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!

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Caliphate

I'm confused by your edit summary in your last edit to Caliphate. You said some Islamist movements oppose a Caliphate. How is that possible? I thought Sharia required a Caliph. Which Islamist movement oppose a Caliphate? Regards, KazakhPol 19:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi KazahhPol,

No sharia requires no caliph as such. Neither the Koran nor the sources about the Prophet Mohammed (Sunna/Hadith) specify what kind of ruler should rule the Islamic umma - important is how the ruler rules, not who rules (although, obviously, Caliphists would debate this). When the prophet died, this resulted in major problems of finding someone to follow him. Nobody else was a Prophet so every one to follow him would be a second best solution. It was agreed among the followers of the prophet to chose the person most suited to lead the Umma (Abu Bakr) but many people opposed this, who would later be called Shiites, because they believe only a person from the family of Prophet Mohammed can rule the umma. Shiite doctrine later developped on and concluded at some point of time that nobody but one of the 12 Imams (in a stricter Shiite sense) can rule the umma - the last of these Shiite imams disappeared in the Middle Ages (the "Hidden Imam") and is believed to return some time in the future, like a messiah. This is why Khomeini after the Iranian Islamic Revolution faced opposition by many other Shiite scholars, who believed it was unlawful for a normal human being to create an Islamic state before the return of the Hidden Imam.

Many Muslims thus actually argue that Islam is a religious/cultural system only, with the divine law being applied by societies as such - not inherently a political one. In other words, there is no need for a government to regulate praying times for example, because people apply this themselves. It becomes much more complicated when it comes to laws like marriage and inheritance law. Nevertheless, there are many convinced that the only really necessary condition is that a political system allows Muslims to apply Islamic law - everyone, e.g. can chose to set his testament in the way the Quran requires inheritance to work, without the government regulating this. Many moderate Islamists actually demand a policy which coheres more with Islamic values, i.e. makes decisions on the basis of sharia. An elected government which maintains Islamic family law for example would be something acceptable for many Islamists. Democracy here becomes a possible option, and many Islamists in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, have demanded democratic rather than autocratic reforms. There are also groups, such as in Morocco, which actively participate in democratic elections, who find their political system ok and who simply wish to make a difference as part of a democratic process.

Indeed, many or probably even most of these movements would oppose a caliph; not only because many Islamist movements of today are strongly territorially bound, i.e. it would be very unpopular to advocate a common ruler for people who simply aren't the same - nationalism is also popular in many ISlamic countries (and the concept of Calip implies one ruler for all rather than one ruler per country)! But also because the idea of a caliph is not inherently Islamic and required by shria. Who implements sharia is not specified. A government acceptable to Islamists in general is Islamic, not Caliphist. The Caliphs also had many problems tied to them: they were secular rulers, many were extremely useless and corrupted. Inherited rights to rule are highly debated in Islam in general. Groups which support a Caliph are small streams within Islamism, in the same way in which there are royalists in many countries where monarchies ceased to rule a long time ago. I have been studying Islamism for several years and I have very rarely encountered caliphist movements. It doesn't mean that they don't exist but they are marginal among Islamists.

Sorry this got so long but I hope it helps! Regards, --Arabist 09:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur. I also believe that if Sahaba would get a chance to use the modern democratic system to operate their government, they would definitely do that! As Islam gives basic guidance for governance and any thing more is simply confusion of culture with religion. Cheers! TruthSpreader^reply 07:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Muhammad's marriages

Hello, You said that you found the format on Muhammad's marriages a bit odd. I have proposed a new slightly different format here. Please leave you opinion.Bless sins 17:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Muslim Conquests

All the wars launched had a Casus belli that did so in the name of Allah. It was a struggle against the infidels who woudl not let the word of teh Islamic Prophet be spread to the lands they are conquering. Even if many of these wars were launched for military, political or economic reasons, they were all done so in the name of God. Thats how they were able to muster zealous warriors of course. I know well what Jihad is, a struggle for the faith. Are you saying that these conquests were not Jihads?

Regards,

Tourskin 23:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Islamization

As a major contributing editor to this article, I just wanted to let you know that it has now been merged with Spread of Islam.--Tigeroo (talk) 13:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed

Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Arabist. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Arabist~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours,
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation

22:05, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed

This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: Special:GlobalRenameRequest. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

10:35, 22 April 2015 (UTC)