Hmm....it would seem you're taking lessons in passive aggressive personal attacks from malik.

And thank you for commenting on my avatar, I think it's nice too. I thought a black background was a lovely touch.

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No, but we can have a desire for where it occurs. The more I read your posts and start to understand what direction Australian Muslims want to take, the more I am convinced you are the enemy and need to be stopped. I am happy for Muslims to be, but not at my belief systems expense, and therein lies the problem. But that's the issue with religion, as history has shown time and time again.

Off topic sorry - Mozzaok you can link to your "pictures" file.  If there's a particular photo you like on the net - can you download it to your "pictures" and then go to your profile and "open" up the picture you want.

If you get the time have a look through the Avatar thread - there's some information there?

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1168580980

Hooray, thanks for the tips, I went to image shack, it took a couple of goes, but I got there, thanks again.

I will let you decide if I am the cheeky penguin or the dozing polar bear, I know how I see myself

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I'm sure you can find individuals with all sorts of strange views. But as I've stated before, the mainstream (what is often referred to as the Sunni Muslims) who are the vast majority of Muslims, accept the Sunnah (Sunnah is a word synonymous with Hadith), and in fact they are called Ahl as-Sunnah (People who follow the Hadith's of Muhammad(pbuh)) because of their belief in the Hadith.

Such ideas have only existed in the last few decades I think, and mostly come from Muslims living in Western countries, where they are seperated from mainstream Islamic Scholarship to some extent, and begin inventing their own interpretations, without being properly qualified to do so.

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A number of reasons. Firstly is because of our falling away from being strict practitioners of our religion. In the late 19th. and 20th centuries large portions of the Muslims were very far away from Islam and became besotted with Western culture. In the mid-late 20th century for instance, it was quite common to see Arab women wearing mini-skirts and adopting other unIslamic customs. Thank God this has all but vanished, and today you'd never find such a thing in most of the Arab world, except for in re-runs on TV. The Muslims are returning to Islam, and this is what scares the West, as they know it is the source of our power.

And secondly because of the naivety of the intellectual leadership of the Muslim community, who fell behind in the political realm, and became secularised and relegated to just a "spiritual" role.

What's interesting to note is that Muslims falling away from practising their religion co-incided with their decline in the world, whereas Christians falling away from their religion co-incided with their ascent on the world stage. This to me indicates our religion was all that held us up there, and your religion was all that prevented you from getting there.

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You cannot invent your own doctrine. A scholar who has an ijazah (permit of scholarship) which must be given to them by a scholar who can prove a chain of teachers all the way back to Muhammad (pbuh) can give rulings on issues, based on the pre-existing established doctrine, they may not invent their own doctrine. Islam is very rigid in this sense, and that's why there are very few significant sects in existence. It is not like Christianity for instance where some guy can just find some plates in the wilderness, claim they're written in ancient Egyptian, translate them and start his own religion and millions will follow him. Muslims demand that their scholars have correct qualifications that can be traced back to the source.

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That's quite interesting, which historians?

History openly disagrees with such a claim. In the early days of Islam, known as the Orthodox period for good reason, The Caliphate was known to have stuck 100% to the Shari'ah and nothing but the Shari'ah and to have been unswerving in it's adherence to Islam. In contrast the last 2 centuries of the Ottoman period saw the introduction of Western style constitutions and reforms, that clearly contradicted the Shari'ah. Muslims began to fall away from Islam and adopt unIslamic dress and other cultural practises that contradicted Islam.

I don't know who these "Most historians" are, but they don't seem to have actually looked *at* the history

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What is more interesting is seeing how a lot of young muslims, whose sense of isolation from the broader community, which they blame on racist feelings about them, but which is actually more to do with their self imposed separatist beliefs, choose to fantasise about long past glory days from the Islamic empires of the middle ages, and believe their role is to try and re-create those days, by harking back to medieval practices as if that will resurrect them to a position where those glory days will be repeated in the modern world.

It is about as much sense as a group of box boys at IKEA, believing if they really develop their Raping, and Pillaging skills, they can create a new Viking revival.

These disenchanted muslim youths are being manipulated by extremist fundamentalist muslims into believing that Islamic sectarianism is their only choice, the few voices of moderation are demonised by these fundamentalist fruitcakes, but the moderates are the only real hope of a reformed and modern Islam to evolve.

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Well the reality is there fore anyone to study. I don't think anyone could study the Orthodox period of Islamic history, and claim they weren't strictly devoted to Islam, and that it was the driving factor behind their advancements. The Arabs were just goat herding nomads, then all of a sudden Islam comes to them and they take over half the world... Yeh just correlation.

Whilst at the 'tail end' of Islamic history, we see the Caliphate had abandoned the Arabic language (in favour of Ottoman Turkish), had annulled sections of Shari'ah to replace it with Western imposed constitutions and reforms (The Tanzimaat), pretty much relegated Islam to being just a religion in the secular sense, as opposed to being the sole governing force as it was in the early Orthodox period.

And something even more striking, is that after the initial Tanzimaat period under Sultan Mahmoud in the early 19th century, decline set in at a rapid pace. The when Sultan Abdul Hamid II (May God have mercy on him) took control of the state in the late 19th. century and he suspended most of the Western imposed Tanzimaat and reinstated the Shari'ah and worked to rebuild Islamic unity, one last breath of life appeared to fill the lungs of the Islamic Caliphate. Then when he was deposed, and the reforms were reinstated, and the Shari'ah again suspended 33 years later, decline set in so rapidly, the state was abolished almost within a decade. It is almost in perfect harmony, move away from Islam -> decline -> move back to Islam -> prosperity -> move away from Islam -> decline -> death. All of this occured within a short 100 year period.

mozza,

Not sure if you're actually following the discussion, but we're not discussing who's better or who's had more impact on history. We're discussing whether the Islamic Caliphate was more/less Islamic in it's early period compared to it's declining days.