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Caliphate of Zanzibar

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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by Daryl   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:44 am

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T2M asks "But it is a valid question as if it is a cultural thing not a tenet thing there should be an example and I am coming up blank.

A curious,
T2M"

An example I would give is the situation existing in the north of the Indian subcontinent where "honour" killings and female genital mutilation are common in villages on both sides of the India/Pakistan border. Both Muslim and Hindu cultures in that area treat female humans as badly as it is possible to imagine. Yet elsewhere the Muslim and Hindu cultures have had female Prime Ministers and respected female intellectuals.

Reasonable to assume the problem is not religion but primitive regional feudal ignorance. Hopefully by the time of the Honorverse this will only occur in isolated instances.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by Hutch   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:47 am

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Whitecold wrote:
namelessfly wrote:The name implies a colony founded by Muslims that has an Islamic, theocratic government. The implications for the status of women seem comparable to Grayson or Masada. While the question of Grayson's religious beliefs and social customs are repeatedly addressed, we don't seem to get much insight into Zanzibar.

Has Islam on Zanzibar reformed so that these issues are not relevant or is the overt sexism simply accepted by Manticore because they need the ally?


I would disagree that caliphate automatically implies that it was founded as Islamic theocracy. I don't know when Zazibar's colonists departed, but it might well be with hundreds of years of official, legal equality on Earth.
By then picking caliphate means no more than Manticore picking a kingdom respectively empire as name for their state form, or Gustav Anderman taking a liking for Prussia.



Just so, whitecold. I lived for four years (1999-2003) in the United Arab Emirates, which indeed are ruled by Emirs and are not in anyway a democracy. I do not say it is perfect (the 'guest' workers are usually just one step from indentured workers and sometimes have slipped lower), but Arab women, albeit in the black head-to-toe dress, work, drive cars, and go to college (again, separate schools, but the educational opprotunities are there). One of the Dubai Sheik's daughters,IIRC, competed in the Olympics recently in one of the Martial Arts (yes, here she is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitha_bin ... Al_Maktoum). And a woman completed in the 2012 Olympics for UAE--in weightlifting.

So I can believe, given nearly 2000 years of history, that a future form of Islam could establish and rule as a Chaliphate and do well by all it's citizens.

I would note in closing that too many people (not necessarily here) tend to equal Muslims=Arabs, forgetting that most Muslims live either in India-Pakistan or Indonesia-Malaysia, with a substantial number in China and the "Stans".

OK, I'm out.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by namelessfly   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 10:44 am

namelessfly

Certainly there can be predominantly Muslim societies that are not theocracies. Class pictures from Cairo university back in the 1970s reveal plenty of women with none wearing burkas or hijabs. Egypt has morphed into a more theocratic country since then with the pendulum swinging back under General Sisi.

This being acknowledged, "Caliphate" has a far more theocratic connotation than emirate. A Caliph is a religious as well as political leader while an Emir is a political leader. Certainly if their was a colony whose ruler was referredto as "The Pope of the Holy Beltegese Empire", most of us would make assumptions about the nature of the society.

The short story "BY THE BOOK" has impressed me with the fact that most of the sublight colonies were founded political and religious malcontents who objected to environmentalist totalitarianism. As expensive as colony ships were, the greenies probably considerred them to be a reasonable price to pay to rid themselves of the most zealous .1% of dissenters so that they would not stir up a revolt. It is easy to imagine how moderate muslimswould be content to stay on Earth while only the most regressive would risk immigration.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by namelessfly   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:18 am

namelessfly

I would refer everyone to this:

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=tc&v=31

The birth rate in the UAE is imploding along with most of the Muslim world. Only Afghanistan has a high birth rate and population growth rate. Projecting only a century into the future one would expect that most of the Muslims on the planet are descendants of the most regressive Muslim societies or the most regressive members of the more enlightened Muslim societies.

The probable pool of Islamic emigrants are likely to be very reactionary.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by Crown Loyalist   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:41 pm

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Keep in mind that Islam is, as a religion, about 1400 years old. Christianity is about 2000 years old. These stories take place 2000 years from now, give or take a century. There has been plenty, plenty of time for doctrinal reinterpretation and reform. Christianity is not now what it was 500 years ago, and is not likely to be what it is now in 500 years. That is as true with Islam.

How many different forms of today's major religions developed out among the stars, doctrinally distinct from one another? I'd wager hundreds. Of each. I'd also wager that particularly in the Solarian League there's been a long process of attempting whatever reconciliations were possible (not unlike the attempts to reconcile Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity, or Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christianity in recent years). Some of that probably succeeded, some of it undoubtedly failed.

Zanzibar may be a Caliphate that decided a thousand years ago that women's rights needed to be protected, and went through a wave of feminism four hundred years back, then had a reactionary period, then a new revolutionary period... until RFC comes along and tells us what the world is like, anything is possible.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by roseandheather   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 2:01 pm

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pokermind wrote:Intolerance is the problem not a specific belief system. I include non religious belief systems here as atheists can and have persecuted believers as much as the religious persecute atheists. I like David's take on this:

Image

My suggestion attack the extremists who preach intolerance not the belief system.


...that is an amazing quote and I'm totally going to memorize it because wow.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 2:08 pm

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Reply to Thread in general, not to any one post:

Women in Moslem countries, including married women,
had the Right to own their own property, including the
Rights to sell it, buy more of it, use it as they
pleased, or will it away as they pleased,
for all fourteen centuries.
Christian women, if married, in western Europe and USA,
were *not* granted these Property Rights
until after 1850.

For fully a thousand (1000) years after the Moslem
Eruption From Arabia, the Caliphate was *more* tolerant
of minorities than any other government or culture,
and *much more* tolerant than Christian governments.
As a Jew, I have studied this, so I know I would have
been better off under Moslem rule than Christian from
632 until 1632, and then just as well off until c1832.

Note that when the Caliph first took Jerusalem, he
*refused* to enter Temple Mount, to worship or even as
a tourist, so as *not* to give his Moslem faithful an
excuse to claim it and turn it into a mosque.
That restraint only ended after the First Crusade took
Jerusalem and drowned it in Moslem (and Jewish) blood.

Howard True Map-addict (a Jew)
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by MAD-4A   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:37 pm

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Howard T. Map-addict wrote:...Christian governments...First Crusade took
Jerusalem and drowned it in Moslem (and Jewish) blood...

One thing to point out here, you say "Christian" but those years and actions were dominated by "Catholicism" while this is a form of "Christianity" it is not all inclusive. The 3rd Crusade attacked Constantinople, an Orthodox Christian city. Catholics persecuted anyone who failed to worship the Pope and bow to his will. There was 100 years in Europe where this was a case of open warfare between "Catholics" and Christians who revered Christ but refused to bow to the Pope. The very premise of Christianity is the reverence of Christ who was himself a Jew, therefor anyone who persecutes Jewish people, by extension, cannot be true "Christians"! You cannot revere one person but persecute ever other member of his people. Those who took Jerusalem and then turned on the Jewish people were not Christians regardless of what they claimed to be. I for one proclaim myself a true Christian and revere the Jewish people as Gods people, even if I’m not one myself.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by kzt   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:48 pm

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Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Note that when the Caliph first took Jerusalem, he
*refused* to enter Temple Mount, to worship or even as
a tourist, so as *not* to give his Moslem faithful an
excuse to claim it and turn it into a mosque.
That restraint only ended after the First Crusade took
Jerusalem and drowned it in Moslem (and Jewish) blood.

Really? So who built the Dome of The Rock in 691 AD? Elves? How about the the prayer house attributed to caliph Umar, which was rebuilt and expanded into the al-Aqsa mosque by his son in 746? How about the rebuild of the mosque in 754 following an earthquake, and the rebuild of that in 780? Then the current mosque was built in 1035 after yet another earthquake.

Oddly enough these all seem to be before the first crusade, which captured Jerusalem in 1099.
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Re: Caliphate of Zanzibar
Post by viciokie   » Wed Apr 16, 2014 5:33 pm

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My own personal take on this issue , is that any woman who follows any kind of faith has lost her mind. Reason being is the vast majority of faith's seem to have a overabundance of degradation focused on women. Mind you this is my perception only and i generally wont express my views. since this ground has been opened i will only say it once to avoid the appearance of flaming.

Personally prefer to avoid anything approaching any kind of faith and have since i was a child. I wont force my views on anyone else and nor will i associate with people who tend to be forcible in their views. Some of my best friends however do follow a faith but they also wont force their views. If a faith cannot win converts based on free will then what kind of faith is it?
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