Hinduism is an example of what you get when you try to reconcile the beliefs of many different settlements, from villages to cities. Keep in mind that Middle Kingdom Egypt had something like 5 different sun gods, and that’s after consolidating the dozens of Egyptian sun gods that had been worshipped before.

What we call Hinduism is really what we could call Academic Hinduism. It’s the Hinduism of the scholar and the elites. It is this Hinduism that relies on scripture. Village Hinduism is a very different thing. In effect a different religion, at the very least, and more like many distinct religions when you get right down to it.

In Academic Hinduism Kali (for example) is an aggregation of many female gods covering many different areas of interest. In Village Hinduism Kali is Mother Earth, goddess of the field and fertility. (You know, the fact Academic Kali is a rampant sadist says a lot about academia in India. ). Village Kali is as opposite Academic Kali as it’s possible for a deity to be.

So when a Muslim has to consider Hinduism the question arises of which Hinduism are we talking about. The Hinduism of the Rig Veda, the Hinduism of a Tamil village, or the Hinduism of the Punjab?

Setting down religious law is so much easier when the only neighbors with a potentially competing faith is a tribe of Jews.

The original definition was limited to the Jews, Christians, and “Sabians”, who in Islamic theology are followers of genuine Prophets (Islam claiming Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus as Islamic prophets, among others). Sabianism today is usually identified today with Manadaenism, a Gnostic faith practiced historically in parts of Iraq and Iran, that recognized John the Baptist as a prophet.

As Islam expanded, and new religions were encountered, new definitions came along. Zoroastrianism, which has a good God, prophecy, angels, Heaven, Hell, an evil prinicple, a Last Judgment, and a prophesied coming of the Messiah, was a natural fit. (Secular historians argue that Judaism imported many of these concepts from Zoroastrianism, and that is how they came to be in Christianity and Islam).

The native religions of India were more difficult. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism were all clearly deeply incompatible with the theistic assumptions of the traditional Book religions, being “pagan” mixtures of polytheism, pantheism, and panetheism. But they also had what were claimed to be revealed scriptures. As a practical matter, Islamic rulers who couldn’t convert such subjects called them Peoples of the Book, while more conservative interpretations denied that status.

Finally, there are the Sikhs (started in India) and Bahais (started in Iran). While both have theologies and scriptures that would have qualified them as People of the Book had they been encountered earlier, both postdated Islam’s founding and are fairly clearly derived from Islam. So they faced persecution, though practical accomodations were sometimes made by rulers not willing to bear the price of religious persecution.

Iran under the Islamic Republic follows the original-plus-Zoroastrianism rule (I don’t recall how Mandaeans are treated) for who is allowed to live under Muslim rule. All other religions are either paganism or heretical perversions of Islam, and are therefore at war with Islam. This in practice is mostly a problem for Bahais, since few Hindus or Buddhists live in Iran.

Anyway, the deal with Zoroastrianism is that while it’s not related to Islam like Judaism or Christianity, it still is basically monotheistic (technically dualist, but Islam has the devil as well), so it gets included. Not to mention, it’s the native Persian religion before Islam invaded.

Jeremy, you’re misinformed. Zoroastrianism is recognized as the original monotheistic religion (no fire worshipping either.) Judaism and Christianity are both derivative. And islam is just a filthy cult…

Yep… exstremists in any religion seem capable of horrific atrocities. It so happens that Islam is ascendant in the cycle of “crazy bastards who think they know God’s Will”, in different times and in different places other religious crackpots have played at the same game.

No matter what religion, no matter what time period, we should ALL (Republican, Democrat or Non-Zombie) be able to stand against religious extremists taking life and liberty from people that disagree with them.

1. Islam, Judaism and Christianity all derive from the Old Testament, and thus they are all people of The Book.

This enables, theoretically, jews and christians to live in Islamic countries by adopting a submissive role a la dhimmitude.

2. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc etc are not of The Book, i.e. derived from the Old Testament, and so are considered to be pagans. For pagans there is forced conversion to Islam, slavery, death or exile.

3. Anyone who thinks that muslims can tell hindus what to do is fooling himself. Fundamentalist Hinduism is a lot nastier than fundamentalist Islam. Jihadist will cut your head off. Hindu extremists will burn you alive and toast marshmallows on the fire.

Nice to see you commenting in this thread.

We stand together on this issue.

I guess we weren’t asleep or ditching history class and see some relevance in learning from human behavior in the past :–)

Again this goes beyond comparisions with Nazism. Many historical scholars are commenting this practice has deep historical roots for all infidels in the foundation of Islam in the 7th/8th Centuries.

Also seldom discussed the Nazis were in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Call a “spade a spade.” Evil is Evil.

Sorry, but the excuse that there’s a grain of “truth”– or even more– in his original story doesn’t excuse Amir Taheri who in that first story stated categorically that these “ideas” which may or not be adopted were already a firm mandatory part of the law.

Sorry, em, no he did not.

Taheri’s sentence no 1) “The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear “standard Islamic garments” designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate “the influence of the infidel” on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress.”

We have had that confirmed.

Immediately followed by sentence no 2) “It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public.”

We know that this has been “envisaged” and discussed. We also know that this is nothing new. It may have been a part of earlier versions of the law. The code was only abolished in 1908, and historic precedent is very comfortable with this idea dating back as far as Caliph Omar II in 717AD.

Much has been made of the fact that the law makes “no mention” of it. Just because a document “makes no mention” of something does not mean it is not – under a definition of “standard” – “implied.”

This is hardly cause for a credibility check of the supposed “secondary motion” (this has been confirmed) that fits the pattern of laws that Iran has already instituted.

The very fact that it is envisaged, discussed and considered is bad enough. These guys are just warming up.

I would rather believe Taheri’s sources in Iran than the left wing apologists, who are busy looking for “the good in Ahmadinejad” and Islam, and confirmation of Iran’s peaceful intentions, rather than recognizing it as a da’wa (an invitation to convert to Islam), a prerequisite for waging war, which it actually is.

Someone told me the other day on a leftie blog that Ahmadinejad did not say that he will annihilate Israel, and that this is a right-wing, pro Jewish conspiracy to sabotage the Farsi translation and to encourage warmongering. And all this with a straight face.

Let me stand with Taheri on this any day of the week, what I see as opposition to his view on this, even on the right, I do not like. But then I have been labeled as a Nazi for daring to agree with him. The mind boggles, elevating me to dizzy heights of recognition.