On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:44:38 -0600, Mark A. Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, Gilberto, > At 03:30 PM 1/16/2005, you wrote: > >>Yes. I don't mean just political oppression in a local context. I mean > >>where they fit in the large scheme of Christiainities in the world. > >>Virtually any kind of statement along the lines of "Muslims believe.." or > >>"Christians believe..." will be a generalization. But in life we make > >>certain generalizations just in order to speak, and point to trends.<< > As a sociologist of religion, I would never make those generalizations. I > don't > think that my voice or fingers would let the words out. ;-)
Gilberto: On some level I sympathize. Mathematicians are trained to see statements as simply false on the strength of a single counter-example. But full mathematical rigor doesn't get you very far in the real world. Mark: How can one make most any generalization which would simultaneously hold true for Roman Catholicism, A Course in Miracles, and the Unification Church? Those who identify with each of these three belief systems define themselves as Christian. Gilberto: At the same time, there are statements which do apply to some, most, or nearly all self-identified Christians. (Would you really give me a hard time if I said that most Christians believe that Jesus was a real person, believed to be the messiah and the son of God?) Maybe I'm just having a memory lapse but I think that I've tried to add in qualifiers to my statements on this comparison of mine which we have been hitting back and forth like a dead horse. (i.e. "Most Christians", "Christians tend to..." "Muslims tend to.." "Muslims are more likely to...") > > >>In the context of discussing Christianities. Roman Catholicism is going to > >>represent a large near-typical mass of Christians because the majority of > >>Christians are Catholic.<< Mark: > However, if one was also attempting to study other Christianities, then Roman > Catholicism would skew the distribution. One would need to make a correction. Gilberto: But from another perspective, since most Christians are Catholic, then from another point of view they *are* the distribution (at least a large chunk of it). If I wanted to talk about what Christians believe world-wide, Catholic opinion would weigh very heavily in that picture. If the scope were limited to the United States, though, the situation might be different. Gilberto: > >>A small fundamentalist church which calls Catholics non-Christian, while > >>part of the picture, and deserving mention, are certainly not > >>representative of world Christianity.<< Mark: > I don't know where you live, but here in the American Bible belt, a great > many folks do not consider Roman Catholicism to be Christian. Gilberto: I don't think you understand me. I realize that opinion exists. At the church I grew up in, once or twice I remember the preacher said things which implied that Catholics weren't Christian. (Now that I think about it, since it was a Hispanic Protestant church alot of the members probably came from Catholic family backgrounds so it wouldn't be good to harp on the point all the time.) Gilberto: What I'm saying is that if we are going to talk about world-wide Christianity, the fact that some Protestants might not think Catholics are Christian, that doesn't actually constitute an actual reason to exclude Catholics from world-wide Christianity (especially not as a part of a conversation between Bahais and a Muslim) Gilberto: > >>So how are you defining "revelations" and on what basis would you say that > >>the Muslim Sufis you claimed to receive revelation but Pentecostals > >>wouldn't?<< Mark: > I was not defining it exactly, but it appears to me that there is a great > deal of similarity between what some Sufis claim to experience and the > populist revelations in Roman Catholicism which you had mentioned. In other > words, individual guidance, prophecy, revelation, visions, etc. (whatever > terms one wishes to use) are common in certain segments of two (largely) > authority-centered religious networks: Islam and Christianity. Gilberto: I think I need to find more specific discussions about this point from the Muslim side. I have a book which I've only skimmed called "Sharia and Sufism" (or something similar. About Sufism especially in India, especially related to Ahmad Sirhindi. I started to look up what it had to say about this topic and some descriptions of what is going on the Sufi side tend to be...very restricted. For example, some were careful to say that ilham and kashf couldn't provide new information which wasn't already contained in the prophetic sources (the Quran and sunnah) So they might provide interpretations of the Quran or insights into hadith, but probably wouldn't produce detailed specific new messages (like Fatima) [Jehovah's Witnesses and Arius ] Gilberto: > >>It seems that in the Bahai faith unity is more important than truth. I > >>don't know. I guess that's my take on it.<< Mark: > Yes, I anticipated what you wrote. Ideally, assuming people are sufficiently > open-minded, critical, and unprejudiced, unity in diversity (consultation) > should lead to the discovery of truth. [...] Gilberto: > >>What do you think my argument is?<< Mark: > You are arguing that Muslims, as you define Muslims, do not believe in > further prophets. The problem with this approach, which involves excluding > certain people who *claim* to be Muslims, is that it becomes self-confirming > or tautological. Thus, you are willing to include Jehovah's Witnesses as > Christians, but you are apparently not willing to include Qadianis as Muslims. Gilberto: I could see how you would make that assumption. Maybe I've been unclear. I don't think Qadianis should be oppressed. [full stop] At the same time, I think "Islam" should mean something and not be some nebulous wishy washy category left to be defined by whoever chooses to use the name. So in the process of defining what it means to be "Muslim" I would actually want to be inclusive but certain things should be "dealbreakers". And given what my understanding of Islam is, finality of prophethood is one of them. That said, I don't expect non-Muslims, especially not Bahais, to go along with that so the claim I'm making isn't just tautologically true. It's a valid as a generalization (as valid as such a generalization could be) So if you want, throw in the Qadianis, the Ismailis, the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, etc. But then on the Christian side you "throw in" Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, followers of Simon Kimbangu, Swedonborgians, Jim Jones, Reverend Moon, the Church of St. John Coltrane, the Snake handlers, the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, Rastafarianism and all the rest. What I'm saying is that the bulk of the people on the Christian side are much more open to the idea of future prophets. And people on the Muslim side have a clearer sense that no prophets are coming. You might find exceptions occasionally, but the statement is as true as any other similar generalization. Peace GIlberto "My people are hydroponic" __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected] To unsubscribe, send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, use subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:[email protected] Web - http://list.jccc.edu/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
