http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi

Quote:


This bit in particular has caught my attention. It explains Abu's absurd attempts at rewriting history so Muslims were always the victims, never the aggressors, and so that Muslims made a huge contribution to basic science.

This requires an openness and willingness to simply reject reality and seek out a few exceptions to turn into a rule. Obviously reality can be a bit confronting, so where it gets too absurd Muslims just say that historical Muslims suffered because they strayed from the faith.

I think it explains Abu and Falah's beliefs that Muslims are on the verge of a big military victory. In this thread:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1337653279/31#31

Falah explains that the Palestinians should never surrender and accept Israeli statehood because their current plight is merely a temporary setback in an ongoing war in which the Muslims will soon have their glorious victory. He even digs up a few historical examples to prove that this is a sound principle, rather than crapping on your own plate. For example he claims that peaceful Australian aborigines were the ones that were killed and that history demonstrates they would have been better off to continue putting up fierce and violent resistance to European immigrants.

freediver wrote on May 24^th, 2012 at 8:31am:


This is totally incorrect.

The term "Salafi" is nothing new and refers to the methodology used by orthodox Muslim scholars in deriving Islamic rulings based on the Quran, hadeeth, and the interpretations based on the earliest generations of Muslims understandings.

The methodology is as old as Islam, and it is ludicrous to imagine that it is something invented in the 19th century when their are 1400 year-old references to it in hadeeth, and Islamic scholars have been mentioning it since then.

The prophet said peace & blessings of God upon him:

"The best of people is my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them (i.e. the first three generations of Muslims)." [Reported by Bukhari and Muslim]

Therefore, orthodox Islamic methodology is based upon acknowledging that the ealiest generations of muslims's understanding of Islam is the basis for the understnading of the following generations.

The three generations referred to in the hadeeth are known as as-Salaf as-Saalih (the pious predecessors). Following the predeceesors ensures that Orthodox Islam remains uncorrupted and pure by deviant interpretations.

Here is another classic example - an attempt to rewrite the history of Australian settlement, without farming as a driving force of settlement and dominant predictor of population density. It even has calls for more violence between settlers and aborigines, although at least this time Falah is not denying the link between Islam and violence. He is promoting it as a good thing.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1338172056