When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy
[ by Charles Cameron — my title is taken from the book of Job — known to Islam as the prophet Ayyub — chapter 38 verse 7 ]
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Let’s begin with Qur’an 22. 40:
I can deeply appreciate a perspective as respectful as this.
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Consequently, I am even more deeply saddened when the Islamic State tears down the crosses atop churches —
than I am when the Chinese do the same exact thing..
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And I’d suggest that the phrase “were it not that Allah checks the people, some by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques” as indicating that those who check / repel / drive back those others who demolish such places of worship, do so in accordance with the divine will..
Here, members of the Islamic State bulldoze a monastery..
Such acts, then, should be checked, prevented, surely, by those who honor the Qur’an.
The question that remains is how best to accomplish this.
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Likewise, there is the phrase about “monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of Allah is much mentioned”..
Apparently, the “name of Allah” was “much mentioned” in monasteries and churches at the time of the Prophet, and we may therefore wonder why Malaysian Muslims would wish to ban the use of that name by Christians —
— when as KL Chan pointed out in his recent LapidoMedia post Do Muslims have a monopoly on the word Allah? — even if we ignore the clear evidence of the Qur’an itself,
One of the oldest evidences of Christian use of the word ‘Allah’ can be found in a Bible translation from 1514.
That’s two years after Michaelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and three years before Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.
As Usama Hasan says, it’s a fiasco.
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Sources:
BibleGateway, Job 38.7, Qur’anic Arabic corpus, Qur’an 22.40 Legatum Institute, China arrests Christians Christian Today, Isis militants desecrate Iraqi church Daily Mirror, ISIS Jihadists using a bulldozer Perry, Malaysia Top Court Usama Hasan, #Malaysia #Allah fiasco
August 30th, 2015 at 1:33 am
The way to check and prevent such acts is kill those who do them. They are men of violence who understand and respect nothing but violence done to them or creditably threatened. As a civilization we can lament it and make learned comments about how this is contrary to some past Muslim tradition; but it is far beyond that now and if that is all we do we may as well all be the cast of Jersey Shore. It is kill or be killed. They have plainly stated that.
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I am sorry to be so harsh about this but when things reach this state the first things that must be done, not the only things but the first things, are violent things, killing people and smashing stuff. We had best get on with it, the sooner the better for they are coming after us just as soon as they can.
August 30th, 2015 at 3:41 am
“The way to check and prevent such acts is kill those who do them.”
But are you not simply repeating the words of the Qur’an? I mean how else would God stop them, give them a ticket and make them pay a hefty fine?
August 31st, 2015 at 1:07 am
The Aramaic word for God is ‘Elah’, which is what Chaldeans/Assyrians call him, and it’s probably very close to what Jesus called him.
August 31st, 2015 at 3:30 am
Thanks, Grurray!
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I got as far in Aramaic as the alphabet, specifically to the letter ‘ayin, which my copy of Franz Rosenthal’s Grammar of Biblical Aramaic informed me was a “voiced laryngal (similar to the sound of incipient vomiting)” — never forgot that phrase, hence my ability to find the book on Google half a century later, but never progressed further in my Aramaic studies either.
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Causation, or correlation?
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August 31st, 2015 at 5:04 pm
Charles,
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Some pronunciations in those Semitic languages definitely sound like they resulted from gastrointestinal distress, but on the other hand I’m not sure if the guttural sounds were caused by it or the cause of it.
In my limited awareness of linguistics, I have noticed that, at least with contemporary dialects, the higher the elevation people come from, the higher the tone that their words make. That may be what’s going on with the ‘whistling languages’ such as the bird language of Turkey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aoguO_tvI