Muslim Unity - Lebanon

format_quote Originally Posted by KAding

I wish this were true. Maybe it's indeed the theory behind Islam, I am not knowledgable enough to judge. But clearly in practise Muslims care more about Muslims than about others. Not in an effort to 'forbid the wrong', but simply because they are Muslims. People who belong to this group ('Muslims') apparently are more 'valuable' in this mindset than those that do not belong to this group. If you look at the topics on this forum it is simply undeniable that Muslims care about other Muslims suffering half a world away, but do not care about non-Muslims suffering half a world away. This is IMHO a natural, but nevertheless ethically corrupt position and it is exactly the same ill that befalls nationalism.

Well this is not entirely correct. Their are muslim NGO and e.t.c that provide
aid towards people of other nationality and faith. The reason muslim show more concern towards those of muslim on other countries is because they been subject to oppression for a long time, most of the muslim in the u.k and even non-muslim hearts goes towards people of palestian, Iraq and other countries in the middle east, because what has been going through those land in history, another factor is because it has more coverage.
If their was not all those atrocities happening in the middle east than most of the muslim, especially the practicing ones will look towards the suffering of other people, and some do, but our resources is so much, and with nationalistic goverment promoting their tribalism to the ignorant mass.

I believe the reason for this is exactly because of this nationalism that aims at 'uniting' all Muslims in a political and ideological unit, being the Ummah. From my perspective Islam appears very good at creating an 'us' vs. 'them' outlook on life, heck, just take the concept of 'Dar al-Islam' and 'Dar al-Harb'. Sure, it is not based on ethnicity or race, but then neither is, say, American nationalism.

Note: Islam is not based on nationalism. Their is no you and us. Their is right and wrong.

Well you can argue that nationalism creates an "us" vs "them", but in Islam it is not us vs them, it is doing the right and forbidding the wrong, and it doesn't undermine the practice of other faith or freedom those so called democratic views or secular views which in fact finds element in Islam. For example education, (Islam does not prohibits science, maths e.t.c in contrary to western view, but what it prohobits is stuff like pornography, viewing women as sex object e.t.c no matter how much the western people say they don't I personally know what is the view of western men since I practically grew up with them.)

No. But we are talking about the involvement of those who are really not affected (ie. Muslims who do not live near Israel). An illustration: Muslims did not become involved when Hutus took Tutsi homes in Rwanda. Why? Because they were not Muslims I would think, they did not belong to your 'group'. Nevermind that it is the same wrong and 'doing right' would require intervening, it still won't happen. It's the exact same reason why Americans didn't intervene in Rwanda either, for example.

Well you can argue that ost muslim don't know what is going on in those land, but I did here muslim speak against those, and I know I did post concerning this topic.
Do you know what caused the Hutsies and Tutsi massacre?
Nationalism (trbalism), in some degree, even though they where practically of the same faith and even same race.
Do you know who promoted this some kind views?

So I really don't accept that the Islamic concept of 'brotherhood' is anymore valid than one based on traditional nationalism, in fact it's exactly the same.

Not really. One is unfiying, cross boundaries and imaginary lines on a map, costums e.t.c and the other is Tribalism.