compare??.. who are you and where do you live

[ReVeLuTiOnAl^]

What am I ?...

Here is Revelutional's philosophy:

I am a muslim, i compare myself as a drip of rain where it falls, it always has the benefit of making life.. it can brings life again to dead lands, dead animals and to people. My mission is to affect and not to be affected... a person to show the real manners and philosophies of my religion.

I live in a world but withing a large circle.. very wide...
My experience in UK showed me something which always make me to wonder and ask strange question... people here in the UK and in the west in general live in a very narrow circle..? how?.,, people live with their neighbours but they don't even visit them, or ask about them ..or even to say hi to them sometimes... one of the strange stories about one of our friends who studies here in the UK, oneday he was invited by his lecturer to a coffee, the guy went to his lecturer's house for the invitation. when he arrived he saw his lecturer's neighbour and he passed them without saying at least HI, our friend asked his lectuerer; "why don't you say hi to him, he is your neighbour", the lecturer said: " I've been here for 17 years but never said hi to him, nor he did"!!! ... he added: "here we live and care about ourselves, i have my own garden to kill my free time, i have my wife to live with, and that's enough"....

Islam orders us Muslims to ask about our neighbours, ask them if they need anything, help them, visit them when they are sick or even when they are fine.. make sure that there is integration between you and them...

[Bimzoori]

Indeed, the issue of neighbourhood is very much stressed in Islam..

The prophet says "He who eats his fill while his neghbor goes without food is not a believer"

[MoonChild]

The religious communities here also stress "neighborly" behavior, although the community served may be the church community rather than ones physical neighbors.

Many people, religious or not, are active volunteers for running soup kitchens, visiting the elderly and taking them food, visiting those in hospitals, services for the homeless, reading programs, etc.

Wanderer and I really like our neighborhood because it is very friendly, lots of kids, and we help each other out. Even so, there are a few people on our street whom we've never met because they always seem to be at work or inside...

[Wanderer]

I recently borrowed a neighbor's circular saw to cut some landscaping timber. I have hired him to paint the trim on my house.

I hired another neighbor to powerwash my house yesterday.

I am frequently asked to come over and help troubleshoot computer problems.

I am also regularly asked to hold another beer tasting party - MoonChild makes pretzels.

I am buying a Supersoaker tomorrow so that I can better introduce myself to the children on the street.



http://www.supersoaker.com/2002_product/maxd/maxd_images/maxd5000_angle_400.jpg

[Mr Tickle]

you were certainly very neighbourly in Spain.............

[Wanderer]

Let's ask Israel how Islamic neighbors are !

[floret]

and ask Palestinians how Israeli neighbors are!

[Mr Tickle]

For the Ottoman's, conquest of the infidel was for them a religious duty. In 1354 they occupied Gallipoli, and then spread across the Balkans, defeating the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, and completing the conquest of Bulgaria and Thessaly by 1393. This meant that the capital of the Byzantine Empire (or what little was left of it), Constantinople, was now isolated. 'Close the gates of the city' said the Sultan to Byzantine Emperor Manuel II (1391-1425), 'for I own everything outside.'

By then it was only a matter of time before Constantinople was attacked, and under the energetic and ruthless Sultan Mehmet II, the Ottomans began the siege of the Byzantine capital in April 1453 – this despite the fact that at his accession to the Sultanate in 1451, he had sworn on the Qur'an to the Byzantine embassy that he would respect the latter's territorial integrity.

Obviously, an oath to an infidel meant nothing.

There is no way that the siege of Constantinople could be classified as 'defensive' jihad: rather, it was an unprovoked act of aggression.

When the city fell on Tuesday 29 May, with Muslim forces slaughtering, plundering, and enslaving multitudes of Christians. This fact, seldom mentioned by those Muslims glorying in the event, demonstrates how intrinsic were massacre and oppression to the Ottoman Khilafah, and naturally gives reason for concern to non-Muslims when they hear of nostalgia for the institution among Muslims. Mehmet II entered the great church of Hagia Sophia, the premier cathedral of eastern Christendom, and rather than respecting its religious integrity, expropriated it for Islam, formally transforming it into a mosque. By the 16th century, the Balkans as a whole had come under Muslim rule.

You wanna talk about being neighbourly?

[mimosa]

I have lived in the Arab World for six years, four different cities, three different countries. I'm quite an outgoing person for a 'Westerner', and always say hello etc. None of my neighbours have ever shown any desire to 'integrate' or be 'neighbourly'.

True, in Egypt there was one family who always said hello, but the head of the household worked for me. And I've met some of my Omani neighbours, but only the children knocking on the door during Eid (as a good neighbour, I chat to them and give them sweets).

I have many friendly and hospitable Arab friends, but only those I have taken the intiative in getting to know. Is it because in the same socities where such communal intimacy remains traditional, racism and fear of the 'other' still runs so strong?

[floret]

we're not proud of the Ottomans:)

[mimosa]

Mr P - thin ice, that one......if we're going back to the fifteenth century, I don't think any civilisation was very 'neighbourly'. The next people to pillage Constantinople were Christians if I remember rightly.

[Mr Tickle]

Mim,

Just pointing out that not all Muslims are averse to lebensraum

Their clan leaders called themselves Ghazis, warriors for the faith of Islam

thin ice is useful with vodka

[Sun]

As usual Pino is see's it only Islam , but let me refresh your memory here Pino neighbour's:
The story of inquisition is more true for Muslims in Spain then the Spanish Jews as there were around six million Muslims during their long 800 years of old Rule and how they were massacred. The followings are from "GLIMPSES OF WORLD HISTORY ON "END OF FIRST MILLENNIUM AFTER CHRISR" BY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU, P. 176. 189-190. 188-192:
A historian, carried away by his enthusiasm a little, has said that:

"The Moors organized that wonderful kingdom of Corhdova, which was the marvel of the Middle Ages, and which, when all Europe was plunged in barbaric ignorance and strife, alone held the torch of learning and civilization bright and shining before the Western world." Kurtuba (Cordova) was capital of this Kingdom for just 500 years. Kurtuba was the capital of this kingdom for just 500 years. This is usually called Cordoba in English, sometimes Cordova. I am afraid I have a way of spelling the same name differently at times. But I shall try to stick to Cordoba. This was a great city of a million inhabitants, a garden city ten miles in length, with twenty-four miles of suburbs. There are said to have been 60,000 palaces and 700 public baths. These figures may be exaggerations, but they give some idea of the city. There were many libraries, the chief of these, the Imperial Library of the Emir, containing 400,000 books. The University of Cordoba was famous all over Europe and even in western Asia. Free elementary schools for the poor abounded. A historian says that: "In Spain almost everybody knew how to read and write, whilst in Christian Europe, save and except the clergy, even persons belonging to the highest ranks were wholly ignorant. Such was the city of Cordova, competing with the other great Arab city of Baghdad. Its fame spread all over Europe and a German writer of the tenth century called it "the ornament of the world". To its university came students from distant places. The influence of Arab philosophy spread to the other great universities of Europe, Paris, Oxford and the universities of northern Italy. Averroes or Ibn Rushd was a famous philosopher of Cordova in the twelfth century. In his later years he fell out with the Spanish Emir and was banished. He went and settled in Paris.

As in other parts of Europe, there was a kind of feudal system in Spain also. Great and powerful nobles grew up, and between them and the Emir, who was the ruler, there was frequent fighting.

An English historian, Lane Poole, writing of the Saracens in Spain says:

"For centuries Spain had been the center of civilization, the seat of arts and sciences, of learning and every form of refined enlightenment. No other country in Europe had so far approached the cultivated dominion of the Moors. The brief brilliancy of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the Empire of Charles, could found no such enduring pre-eminence. The Moors were banished; for a while Christian Spain shone, like the moon, with a borrowed light; then came the eclipse, and in that darkness Spain has grovelled ever since. The true memorial of the Moors is seen in desolate tracts of utter barrenness, where once the Moors grew luxuriant vines and olives and yellow ears of corn; in a stupid, ignorant stagnation and degradation of a people which has hopelessly fallen in the scale of nations, and has deserved its humiliation. In central and western Asia we see the remnants of the Abbaside Empire of Baghdad. Baghdad still flourishes, and indeed is increasing in power under a newest of rulers, the Seljuq Turks.But the old empire has slit up into many kingdoms. Islam has ceased to be one empire and has become merely the religion of many countries and peoples. Out of the wreck of the Abbaside Empire has arisen the kingdom of Ghazni, which Mahmud has ruled and from which he has swooped down on India. But though the Empire of Baghdad has broken up, Baghdad itself continues to be a great city, attracting artists and learned men from distances. Many great and famous cities also flourish in central Asia at this time Bokhara, Samarqand, Balkh and others. And extensive trade is carried on between them and great caravans carry merchandise from one to the other.

The Spanish Christians seem to have been very much against washing and bathing. Perhaps they objected to these simply because the Spanish Arabs were very fond of them and had erected great public baths all over the place. The Christians even went so far as to issue orders "for the reformation of the Moriscos" or Moors or Arabs, that "Neither themselves, their women, nor any other persons, should be permitted to wash or bathe themselves either at home or elsewhere; and that all their bathing houses should be pulled down and destroyed".

Apart from the sin of washing, another great charge brought against the "Moriscos" was that they were tolerant in religion.It is extraordinary to read of this, and yet this was one of the main charges in an account of the "Archbishop of Valencia in 1602, when he was recommending the expulsion of Saracens from Spain. Referring to this he says, "that they (the Moriscos) commended nothing so much as that liberty of conscience in all matters of religion, which the Turks, and all other Mohammedans, suffer their subjects to enjoy". What a great compliment was thus paid unwittingly to the Saracens in Spain, and how different and intolerant was the outlook of the Spanish Christians! Millions of Saracens were driven out forcibly from Spain, mostly into Africa,some to France. The Arabs had been in Spain for seven hundred years; and during this long period they had become to a large extent merged in the people of Spanish. Probably the Spanish Arabs of later years were quite different form the Arabs of Baghdad. Even to-day the Spanish race has much of Arab blood in its veins. The Saracens had also spread to the south of France and even to Switzerland, not as rulers, but as settlers. Sometimes even now one comes across an Arab type of face among the Frenchmen from the midi. Thus ended, not only Saracens rule in Spain, but also Arab civilization. For, even earlier, this civilization had collapsed in Asia, as we shall presently see. It influenced many countries and many cultures, and left many a bright souvenir. But it did not rise again by itself in after-history. After the Saracens left, Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella, grew power. Soon afterwards, the discovery of America brought vast wealth to it, and for a while it was the most powerful country in Europe, dominating others. But its fall was rapid and it sank into insignificance, and while the other countries of Europe advanced, Spain remained stagnant, dreaming still of the Middle Ages and not realizing that the world had changed since then. Many of the Saracens or Arab Muslims left Spain and went to Africa. Near Granada, overlooking the city, there is a spot which still bears the of "El ultimo sospiro del moro", the last sigh of the Moor. But many muslims were killed brutally along with all the Jews and for the cruelty of the so called Christianity of the west there is no trace of those muslims who ruled there for around 800 long years.


Only the ignorant and enemies of Islam will not want to talk on Caliphate. Middle East means Caliphate and nothing. A Muslim must take baya i.e. the oath of allegiance at the hand of a Caliph as it is part of faith. No nation can survive without a leader. So World Muslims can not survive without a Caliph. So called Israel was created after Sultan (Caliph) Abdul Hamid refused it and so Without Caliphate there will be no peace in This World, I repeat without Caliphate there will be no peace in this World and surely without Caliphate the World will be destroyed by those who destroyed the Caliphate.

We do not attack anyone. We only attack and ready to attack to the traitors within and outside. So accept the truth with proof. We do not conspire against any nation. We do not bribe to any separatist group of any country.

So we will not tolerate any one who will interfere in our internal affairs.

[ReVeLuTiOnAl^]

Originally posted by mimosa
I have lived in the Arab World for six years, four different cities, three different countries. I'm quite an outgoing person for a 'Westerner', and always say hello etc. None of my neighbours have ever shown any desire to 'integrate' or be 'neighbourly'.



mimosa:

People in our countries especially the GCC know alot about this habit in the western world, and therefore I am sure they don't show any desire of integration not because they donot want to, but because they think that you donot want to integrate with them, however believe me once you yourself start showing more signs of integration with them such as try to visit them or stay with their men when you see them outside their homes, definately they will be more than happy to integrate and visit you or arrange any visits or picnics with you... We used to have an AMerican lady who lived in one of our very close neighbours house 25 years ago before i was born, she lived there for almost 12 years, that means when i was 7 she left to America, 3 years ago she came and visited us especially from the US and she brought some pistures of us when we were kids.. i was amazed..and she was amazed when she saw us youngs and i enjoyed talking with her as my english is good...
She told me how her life in oman was and how people were suprised when first time she lived here, but she convinced that she was the one who started the integration as according to what she said that Omanis and most in the gulf are careful in dealing with us...

So i think you should make some more signs of integration and care.. however i must not forget that recently, there has been a decline in relations between neighbours, people are becoming more concerned about themselves and their families and own businesses, still i can't imagine our society without this habit, which is really great and one of the interesting aspects of Islam. :)

[mimosa]

Right enough Rev, people in the Gulf are changing, and for the same reasons: In Oman, many peopl have lived in the same village for generations. But internal migration to the big cities is increasing, and people do not know their neighbours so much. Many people only stay in e.g. Muscat throughout teh week, they do not consider it 'home'.

It was the same in the UK, and still is in some areas. I know all the neighbours in my village, it's a different attitude. But if you live in a big city, maybe everyone is a little more isolated. As I say, I have now experienced that in the Arab World too - but I have only lived in cities, country folk are more curious to get to know you.

But I still think Omanis are nervous or suspicious of foreigners (though not as bad as some other nationalities) But maybe you have good reason, given our strange habits and culture! :)

[Arabian Princess]

One of the things that I always wanted, is live in a neighbourhood where I know all the neighbours. When I was in my elementry years that happned, but as I grew older although I do have contact with my neighbours it was not as strong as it was.
No matter what is the situation now it should not be like this, Prophet MOhammed (peace be upon him) called for muslims to take care of thier neighbours .. up to the 7th neighbour .. and that to show how important neighbourhood is to the society.