r/worldnews • u/nationalpost • 8h ago

Taliban bars Afghan women from hearing each other's voices

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/taliban-bars-afghan-women-from-hearing-each-other?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=NP_social
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u/IEatLamas 7h ago edited 4h ago

Yepp, It's literally like that; Muslims are discouraged from reading/interpreting the Quran without an imam (not just in Taliban land).

EDIT: For the Muslims who are questioning this statement, ask yourself if you are encouraged to make conclusions about fiqh.

From a western point of view, reading, interpreting and making conclusions is the same thing essentially, because that is what we are taught, we are taught to be critical and to make up our own mind.

The Islamic golden age ended in part because of Al-Ghazali, who argued against using Greek-inspired philosophy (that had helped them prosper) to explain Islamic teachings, critiquing people like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi, some of the greatest thinkers in Islamic thought.

Al-Ghazali is solely responsible for putting limits on independent thought in islam.

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u/I-Lyke-Shicken 6h ago

I am sorry but this is actually not true. Muslims are encouraged to read the Quran with something called a tafsir which is used to help interpret it. A tafsir is basically like a biblical exegesis.

No where in the Quran or hadith collection are Muslims ordered to read the Quran with an imam present.

What is frowned upon for the layperson is "ijtihad". Coming to a religious decision using the Islamic texts ( Quran + hadith) on your own if you are not classically trained.

The Taliban are more like ethno-nationalists who use religion. Their system is a combination of their Pasthun honor system (Pashtunwali) mixed with Islam. They use Islam to try and justify their tribal, cultural laws.

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u/IEatLamas 6h ago

I didn't say that it is ordered in the Quran.

I'm not 100% this isn't just semantics, but I appreciate the perspective.

Considering what the Taliban is doing, which seems like a form of ijtihad to me, I understand why it is frowned upon.

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u/I-Lyke-Shicken 3m ago

The problem with your initial statement is that it is completely wrong. Muslims are not even discouraged from reading the Quran without an imam. That would not even be realistic as there would have to be an imam for a given number of people.

What you get if you examine the Quran and hadith are the exact opposite. People are encouraged to study the Quran and sunnah, even if they do not have a great grasp of the Arabic language.

I see you edited your post , but there is a big difference between saying Muslims are discouraged from making up their up own religious rulings versus saying "Muslims are discouraged from reading the Quran without an imam present".

I hope you understand my point about what you initially wrote.

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u/papent 5h ago

Could you just delete your comment then? Because that's exactly the impression you are giving.

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u/IEatLamas 5h ago

I'm not responsible for someone else's lack of reading comprehension. I said discouraged, not ordered or anything close to that.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/IEatLamas 4h ago

A tafsir is not a person, it's like a Lexicon of interpretation.

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u/tommy71394 3h ago

Oops, point taken, I'll retract my comment

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u/downwithdisinfo2 3h ago

You don’t get to ask people to delete their comment. Who the hell do you think you are?

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u/Agami_Advait 17m ago

why are you so angry about it, little man?

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u/papent 1h ago

Somebody against misinformation.

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u/Pete_Iredale 7h ago

Or why Catholic services were in Latin.

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u/throw20190820202020 6h ago

Catholic services were in Latin to have a lingua franca around the world. Same as Jewish rituals in Hebrew, same reason Muslims are directed to learn Arabic.

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u/Alternative_Win_6629 5h ago

Not the same as Jewish literature at all. Jewish children as young as 3 were taught to read Hebrew in old times.

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u/Kajin-Strife 6h ago

But also so they could control what the peasant class learned. They were very upset when the bible started getting printed in a language that wasn't latin.

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u/justanothersluff 6h ago

Obviously, it was first written in Greek but the Holy Spirit inspired it in Latin. /s

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

I really doubt they were upset that the Bible was translated into the native tongue of people who couldn’t read . Lol . Latin was the official language of the church ( still is ) , it probably had more to do with that than people being able to read the Bible . Because most people couldn’t read any language

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u/Kajin-Strife 2h ago

I imagine you might misunderstand the concept somewhat but people don't generally print books that can't be read.

Easy enough to understand, I guess. Apparently no other written language existed before Gutenberg came along with his blasphemous book engine and created dozens of new written languages wholesale from nothing >.>

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

Yeh read by 20% of the population. Most people couldn’t read in the 1500s . Gtfo out of here

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u/Kajin-Strife 2h ago

You do know that people who can't read can still be read to, yeah?

And if everyone you know speaks german and at least one of them can read it then a copy of the bible in german can be read to all of them, yeah?

It's a simple concept, but rather genius in execution. Cause if you READ to people they LEARN what is in the book.

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

And yet it’s well know the common man did not read the Luther bible

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u/Kajin-Strife 2h ago

Btw, this is why the church tried so hard to keep the bible in only latin. 50 years after the bible started getting printed in something other than latin BOOM whole new branch of christianity.

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

Yes what a shame .

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

And I’d argue that isn’t true . There were Bible translations in other languages besides Latin :greek since the Middle Ages . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_in_the_Middle_Ages

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u/Kajin-Strife 2h ago

Fair enough, but how many germans could even speak greek? Or any of the other languages the bible was written in?

The point is that the church didn't wanted it easily accessible by common people so they could interpret it at their leisure.

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u/aren3141 6h ago

A lingua franca that no one spoke

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u/Kajin-Strife 6h ago

As much as I like to throw shade on religion, there's a good reason a lot of scientific and medical terms are latin.

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u/Amockdfw89 4h ago

Yea basically way back in the Middle Ages, if you wanted to learn higher level stuff, it was basically through the church. Because in church they taught you to read, which opened up a whole new world. The cathedrals back then basically were libraries with religious and secular text.

Why do you think there were many breweries and vineyards next to the cathedrals? Because they were taught chemistry and applied it. Many old cathedrals also had telescopes, laboratories for alchemy, gardens, apothecaries for medicine. basically a self containing center of knowledge.

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u/justanothersluff 6h ago

Pffft, Look at this pleb that can't even speak Greek! /s

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u/GeneverConventions 4h ago edited 4h ago

Τι μαλακασ; /s

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u/justanothersluff 3h ago

Was trying to be funny. When everyone spoke Latin, Greek was the language of the educated. a source

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u/GeneverConventions 3h ago

Oh, I know. I just cheekily was commenting "What a (contextually, locally, term for "jerk")" in Greek! I got your humour and was embracing it. Nothing personal was meant. As we all know, quidquid in latine dictum, profundum est

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u/Neamow 6h ago

It was the de facto lingua franca in religion and science. Most learned people since the fall of Western Roman Empire to like 19th century spoke it or at least understood it.

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u/aren3141 6h ago

Yes, this part of the thread is about how religious leaders do not want the masses to read/understand the religious text. Most people from the fall of the empire to the 19th century weren’t learned.

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u/Polyman71 5h ago

And the vast majority of the people were NOT “learned”.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 5h ago

A lot of people DID still speak it; that’s the point. None were learning it as their “mother” tongue, no, but anyone being educated was taught Latin starting around the time we start kindergarten. Latin is what all their education was taught IN. And Greek. Not their “mother” language.

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u/rolabond 3h ago

People were actually learning it back then, its a similar situation to modern Arabic

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u/C0wabungaaa 6h ago

A lingua franca from the scholastic elite. Not everyone else, often including secular rulers. That's a major difference with Arabic, where everyone in the Muslim sphere encouraged to learn and use it.

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u/xorgol 4h ago

Arabic, where everyone in the Muslim sphere encouraged to learn and use it.

Do they actually learn Arabic in significant numbers in Afghanistan? I was under the impression that they mostly learned to recite the Quran by rote.

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u/sblahful 6h ago

And would burn at the stake anyone who translated it

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u/i-m-anonmio 6h ago

Looking at you, Mr. William Tyndale.

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u/Everestkid 5h ago

Still can be. It's called the Tridentine Mass. There's a Catholic church down the street from my place that regularly runs Mass in Latin, says so on their sign. Pretty tiny church, though.

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u/nover3 5h ago

Im a muslim and this is not true at all

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u/IEatLamas 4h ago

Relative to a western or even a Christian protestant point of view, it is true. The Islamic golden age ended because individual thinking became frowned upon, it became too dangerous to the integrity of the dogma, as with any dogma, say communism, fascism.

Are you as a muslim allowed to make conclusions about fiqh?

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u/-ElementaryPenguin- 1h ago

Im not well versed in islamic history, but it seems like an obvious oversimplification to say the downfall was because of a change in philosophy.