Vincent Adepoju:
All the mistakes are mine, and I'm not going to read this over.
You sometimes sound as if you're talking to a fellow idiot. I know that you believe yourself to be greatly learned, but please try to be a little more humble. You want to teach me how to ask my question and how to answer yours. If you're not careful I'll send Hamza, my grandson's friend from Egypt to discuss this kind of matter with you. I discussed such matters with Alims ( scholars) at al-Azhar during my last six weeks in Cairo, sat humbly at their feet, in 1991 - and not once was I given the kind of jazz now coming from your rear - and mind you, to date, the humblest person/ human being I have ever met is Abu Al Wafa Al Taftazani - the professor of Islamic Philosophy at Cairo University and I came to that conclusion during and after an hour long audience with him in his office and was initiated into the Rifai Order at the Al-Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, that same Thursday…The same Cairo University, where USA's President Barack Hussein Obama kick-started the Arab Spring with the greeting, assalamu alaikum.
It's exactly as Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time"
In some neck of the woods, the problem is that Niggaz are scared of Revolution, and it's exactly as The Last Poets put it : "When the revolution comes Some of us will probably catch it on TV with chicken hanging from our mouths"
There's a moment in history - an extended moment, a movement, a wave, you may call it a revolution - like the Haitian Revolution, like the American Revolution, like the French Revolution, like the Russian Revolution, like the Chinese Communist Revolution, like the Algerian Revolution , like The Islamic Revolution in Iran, a brand otherwise known as the Iranian Revolution
What was achieved in Mecca and is still on-going, down through the ages may be referred to as an ideological conquest.
Instead of doing something else right now, I'm going to "expend" some energy and some of my precious time writing this, to whoever is going to read it, with the understanding that (1) I'm only exercising a little my freedom here, and (2) I'm not Abu Hurairah or a paid praise singer, composer, portrait painter or poet for hire…
So, what do you have to say about Ojogbon's " Let there be light !"?
Coming from Ojogbon, first and foremost one intuits intellectual illumination, nothing as mundane as the everyday necessities such as clean pipe-born water etc that seems to be so woefully lacking for everyone, where you are.
Shouldn't you be more concerned about that, since it most directly affects you? Shouldn't we be more concerned about that than about "Exploring Every Corner of The Cosmos in Search of Knowledge" ? Yeah, begin by digging deep where you're standing, and you might be lucky to find some oil or diamonds. Of course, Bobby D did moan ( I Shall Be Free No. 10)
"Well, I don't know, but I've been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first…"
BTW; Re - Alexander Pope's Epitaph for your man, Sir Isaac Newton, 1735:
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
All was and is light except in the world's second most religious country, Nigeria where you find many who are more Catholic than the Pope, more Muslims in Nigeria than in Saudi Arabia, and thanks to Al-Islam, there's a lot of nur - the most essential kind of light there is
I understand that for you, on a daily basis - it has to be prophetic and that it must be difficult for you to predict the peripatetic, sometimes epileptic supply of the electric. I suppose that the safest kind of prophecy about the Naija electric , one that covers all future eventualities, is "encapsulated" in these four words : Never. Expect. Power. Always., during my time in Nigeria (1981 - 84) abbreviated as NEPA
I sympathise with you struggling to overcome some of the more than metaphorical darkness in Nigeria, and that we have to apply some reverse gear to the arrested development In your neck of the woods. Without modernity's electric current, I wonder how AI is going to take over. Have your conversations with the trees thrown any futuristic light on this, or must we forever go on agonising about the current present and the past?
In the modern post- Kant, and post-Russell world (post the four horsemen Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett etc) I suppose that this is the kind crap that should interest you :
What did Bertrand Russell Think About Buddhism and Christianity
More seriously :
Fisabilillah
Obdurate is the wrong word by which to describe you. As Lakunle the village school teacher put it to his Sidi, in Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, "You are as stubborn as an illiterate goat." Disabuse yourself of the idea that you are the lion or a lion - of the House of Judah or anywhere else, when you're not even from Sierra Leone. The illiterate goat in question is the same goat referred to in that Hungarian-Jewish proverb, "Approach a goat from the back, a horse from the front, and a stupid person from no direction whatsoever".
In case you don't know it, abuse comes with the territory, in your case that of the arrogant interlocutor pursuing his mission with Gradgrindian grandeur or is it vigour - or is it rigour - talking down to his less intelligent earthlings. In his early days in his birthplace Mecca, in some quarters the Prophet of Islam sallallahu alaihi wa salaam - was the object of some abuse, and much ridicule, not least of all from Amr ibn Hisham ibn al-Mughira the so-called wisest man in Mecca at the time, and as the down-to-earth super-rationalist and sceptic that he was, responded thus to The Israʾ and Miʿraj : "Muhammad , raise one leg, and now raise the other and keep both legs in the air - you see, you can't, and yet you want us to believe that you could fly? "
It was after that incident that he was given the nickname Abu Jahl ( "the father of ignorance")
Jesus of Nazareth also suffered abuse - in his case and quite unlike the Prophet of Islam, who never claimed divinity, according to John 10:33, " The Jews" picked up stones to stone him, saying "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God."
Then there's all that nasty business of human sacrifice -this time it's the theology of the cross -the kind of sacrifice that was thought to have been abolished by the event known as the Akedah
I wish that I had time for all the repetitive little tittle-tattle. What's your point? You are sarcastic, ironic, iconoclastic and disrespectful towards Wale Gazal, who nevertheless - decent Muslim fellow that he is, takes it in his stride; you salute him as "the Islamic idealist" - as if he is divorced from reality and he is the one and only Muslim in the world who doesn't know the meaning of the word "fitra" ! I suppose that your own version of idealism - not the Kantian version, of course not, is more along the lines of ahimsa - whilst you may be the vegetarian or Jain who disapproves of those who break eggs to make halal omelettes, or the kind of vegetarian who does not mind chopping off the heads of vegetables unlike e.g. deGrasse Tyson .
So how do you think that your universe came into existence ( another meaningless question?) According to the Quran, Allah ( God) said " kun!" - and it was (just like Allah said "Let Newton be", and always light ). According to our Hebrew scribes, the Almighty created everything through the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet ( if you believe that then Abraham Abulafia should interest you) for real Islamic cosmology you should listen to Seyyed Hossein Nasr - I once saluted him when he visited Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh in London) and according to some of your cosmic scientists, there was a big bang - violence on a cosmic scale - and you? A divine drop of semen, from your dad, I suppose, and you could please spare us the awesome rub-a-dub details about the virgin birth.
You've heard about the alleged rebellion in Heaven? Once upon a time, more violence up there. You've also heard about Cain, the Flood no doubt, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah ,by the hand of the Almighty, just as you must have heard about The Ten Plagues
Your main beef is that that history records an event that Muslims worldwide know as the conquest of Mecca and your problem seems to be your idea that the Prophet of Islam was a fallible human being made in the image and likeness of Oluwatotyin Vincent Adepoju, when nothing could be further from the truth. As far as Islamic matters are concerned the Prophet of Islam sallallahu alayhi wa salaam was and is MASOOM.
Infallibility is one of his qualities
Now, please try to either get that into your head.
And if you can't at least try to wrap that around your head ( like a turban
Plenty of resources here : https://www.al-islam.org/
On Friday 26 April 2024 at 10:59:58 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
Cornelius,
Why not express your opinion on the question and justify that opinion?
You are not doing that bcs that would lead you into the trap you have set for yourself in an ahistorical reading of Islamic history.
Muhammed was a great man, but a man nevertheless, implying imperfection.
We should be able to acknowledge his contradictions as testifying to the complexity of his humanity while taking advantage of his persona as we see best.
That Muhammad established Islam in Mecca through force of arms does not imply that Islam must be promulgated by force of arms.
Even in Muhammad 's vision of Islam, various elements cohere.
Its not realistic to emulate Muhammad in all particulars even as he may inspire one.
I see such issues as the kinds of issues that need to be addressed, instead of seeking to escape from unavoidable historical facts or using violence to suppress diversity in approaches to Islam, as some do.
Thanks
Toyin
You could study the history of Mecca, if you have the time
Once again :
" Who told you that the people of Mecca were " subjugated" to " his religion"?
# Check this out : The people of Mecca accept Islam
Did Brer Adepoju by any chance read Edward Said's Orientalism ?
Take it all in and check it all out in the spirit that it's part of the freedom of speech which we all claim to espouse. I'd hate to have to take you off your high horse.
As Hamlet said to the corpse of Polonius, " I took thee for thy better "
There's also the old Hungarian-Jewish Jewish proverb that goes, "Approach a goat from the back, a horse from the front, and a stupid person from no direction whatsoever "
You pose no such dilemma to me, and I'm not about to humour a cosmic scholar like you any further, neither do I seek to lighten your burden, such as your having to do some of your research in the dark, due to lack of electricity in your corner of darkness in Nigeria, and, Islamically speaking, nor should a scholar - any kind of scholar , including a so-called scholar of Islam be approached anally, in this instance with the exception of the one you chose to cite : Maxime Rodinson - and of course you have approached him , as he should be approached: anally. Great Congratulations !
The other that should be approached from the rear is Ignác Goldziher - I'm thoroughly acquainted with both him and Maxime Rodinson , through the machinations of those who wanted to turn me away from investigating Islam any further.
To tell you the truth, the topic doesn't interest me that much. For all I care, all the Islamophobes can go and drown in the nearest creek and my only reaction would be good riddance !
The world would be a better place without them.
Adepoju: This is what's required of you and it's not just your cerebral head and the screws that might be missing in it that's at stake : No more vile calumny directed at Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's most beloved Prophet of Islam - a mercy to the worlds !
Taking the matter at hand - the threat Islamophobia in your country Nigeria, seriously, I drew your attention to what the Quran says about the parameters of discussion, little realising you'd refer to that as a "digression" : Surah Al-'Ankabut Ayat 46 , that aql mentioned 77 times in the Quran (Islam's foundational scripture) is an essential part of Islam, and of course my friend S. Parvez Manzoor who, post-Rodinson and post 911 etc has been writing very engagingly about the Islamophobia issue - whereas your one and only point ad nauseam is that "Islam is to blame" - for Islamophobia. And what pray is to blame for antisemitism? Racism? Colonialism? Crass stupidity? And who are you to dictate to me what I should and should not do so that you "dont expend energy" - a five minute read, much shorter than my patient wading through your usual very abstruse, mystical & cosmological gobbledegook which is always infinitely longer and always arrives at some cosmic or comic black hole or no point at all. Please feel free to dialogue with yourself : to monologue - write an article on the subject.
It's known as a Parthian shot : My digression ended with these two sentences which you are either ignoring or the great pretender that you are, you are pretending that you didn't read , since they address the core of your absurdities in this your discussion with Wale Gazal :
" Who told you that the people of Mecca were " subjugated" to " his religion"?
# Check this out : The people of Mecca accept Islam
Nota bene : There are some things that I'm not inclined to discuss with just anybody, especially not with a fellow ignoramus. My advice to you is to check your sources , so that you don't go around quoting Miller : Jesus never existed - as an authority on the subject just because you found him in Wikipedia or because he has a couple of God-given PHds in the subject, although he never met Jesus in person. By contrast, The Prophet of Islam , sallallahu alaihi wa salaam, lived in the full glare of history , we even know what he had for breakfast.
You could start here : https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Shia+websites
My own immediate background: During my period 1971 - 1981 in Sweden, I knew little about Christianity ( never set foot in a church ) and knew absolutely nothing about Islam. 1981 -1984 in Nigeria, almost got drowned in the baptismal waters in Umuahia. 1984 -2024 have been made painfully aware of Islamophobia In Europe which I imagine is a little different from the home- grown variety in Nigeria where centuries old Islam and Muslims live in the same space and coexist in a symbiotic relationship with the other Nigerian people practising other religions and ways of life.
On Wednesday 24 April 2024 at 06:32:45 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
Im happy to discuss Cornelius if you address the issues frontally, without digression, so i dont expend energy trying to arrive at the point you are making.
thanks
toyin
Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
I'm not about to take refuge in the Gestalt Prayer.
To put you in a lighter mood, here's some Mandinka Muslim music from Bamako, Mali:
Salif Keita : Dery (live) Dery ( studio)
You may complain like Tevia here or on this first day of Pesach continue to be patient like Iyov /Job. Please do as you please. You may go on, continue like a God-forsaken kafir and feel free to blame it all on Islam , and before you do that please take note that just like any other scriptures, Islam's scriptures are also open to translation and interpretations, especially in the dialogue between orthodoxy and what's sometimes deemed a blasphemy and heresy .
How do you deal with the loose cannon/ lone ranger /group defence / explanation/ justification /self-justification that begins with " God told me to" - do it ?
Always God, never the devil, except every once in a little while it's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, or The Devil and Miss Prym, or Netanyahu (the prince of holiness incarnate) and the IDF rabbis - and - as you know, in Nigeria it happens more than occasionally (more often than never) that a sweet Pentecostal sister knocks on your door and tells you that GOD sent her to you, for you to burst out in song, like Jon Hendricks, with I'll Bet You Thought I'd Never Find You , or Marvin Gaye with Heaven must have sent you from above , or better still "Have you ever been experienced?" (Jimi Hendrix with the question: Are you experienced ?
