You just keep making these assertions in without ever backing them up. I’m starting to think you’re incpable of writing except line by line. What problems did the West have but not the Islamic world? Which islamic values specifically are very compatible with libertarianism? Explain things.
"1) Islam NEVER explicitly calls for a state/government.
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Sharia law is NOT in the Quran but in the Hadith which some Muslims believe are fabricated.
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The Islamic World was much more libertarian, free market and overall in-line with austrian economic principles than the Christian world was at the same time.
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Islam views fiat currency as immoral and calls for sound money like gold dinars which aren’t subjected to inflation and which prevent keyensian consumerism all while keeping a free market."
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Yes, it does. As in Christianity and Judaism, there is express backing of government in the time of all of the prophets. Which includes Abraham, Moses, Kings Solomon and David, etc. It would be absurd to say these are not governments. Allah and Yahweh gave them these governments to those he chose. He didn’t say they can do whatever they want.
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It is in both of them. Hadith is not considered fabricated by anyone. Especially not in history.
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This is not saying much. When Genghis Khan came to the Islamic world, he was considered more civilized than them and the Christian world. And perhaps he still is. India was more advanced than Europe for many centuries. Until Islamic conquest under the Mughals.
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This is not true. And it is contradictory. If a law stated you must use a ‘gold dinar’, it is still fiat. Especially if there is a precise definition of such a coin. Since fiat is defined by its being given as a law or regulation. Instead of based on competition and the market.
Seems to be a lot of unsupported claims on both sides of the issue; I don’t know enough about the topic to make an authoritative statement but thought I’d share some links to an Islamic Libertarian institute and few interviews of their founder on antiwar.com. Hopefully they’re of some use:
http://dissentradio.com/radio/08_05_12_ahmad.mp3
http://awr.dissentradio.com/09_01_24_ahmad.mp3
http://dissentradio.com/radio/10_06_03_ahmad.mp3
http://dissentradio.com/radio/11_05_16_ahmad.mp3
http://dissentradio.com/radio/11_09_15_ahmad.mp3
I see the anarchist mindset (especially a more liberal anarchist view) as the mindset of a staunch atheist, materialist and nominalist. It is something that recognizes no ideals, or higher up values - it recognizes no Culture, Justice, Truth, Wealth, Science, Govt, or whatever as these mystic “things to aspire to in themselves” but merely a consequence of actions that transpire due to our self interested and inherently social actions.
It’s the minute someone turns anarchism from a mindset of figuring out the practicle working of things to some political ideal does it become as hokey , insane, irrelevant, in a losing position, and ineffecient as every other mystic thing that is bound to fade away in the own obscurity it spells out for itself like Conservativism, Traditionalism, Mysticism, Nationalism, Pacifism, Idealism, etc, etc.
And even if someone comes to anarchist views for whatever silly reason (ex: pacifism) - assuming the person makes any sense at all, I will bet a nickle that once the idea and reasons are deconstructed and psychologized they will fall in line with a materiialistic nominalism ( be it technocratic cosmopolitanism or stone age primitivism), in spite of their language.
*Note: I am not saying anarchism has a monopoly on materialistic nominalism (ex Hobbes, Machiavelli, etc, etc) nor am I saying one HAS to be a staunch materialist to be an anarchist - I am saying that if one makes any coherent sense about “anarchism” that my bet is the mechinism for reasoning will be a type of materialistic nominalism.
What is anarchism if not idealism? Doesn’t it require ideals to support a radical theory of organization? If you had none, why should you care how society is organized?
It requires no more ideals to “support anarchism” than it does to favor your favorite king to the throne, communist dicator, right wing fascist dictator, presidential canidate, etc etc. Your just talking about a comparative advantage for yourself to thrive be it by psychic profit or material profit.
why do you put quotation marks around ‘support anarchism’? I’m genuinely curious because I always see your signature and wonder what you mean.
The term “explicitly” serves in this sentence as a “weasel word”, and equivocation, that allows you to twist the truth on the matter. Using ‘never’ makes the claim seem strong, but the weasel word sucks all the power out of your statement. The simple fact is that hardcores muslims have been setting up theocracies and Sharia-based legal codes all over the world, including in newly liberated Egypt.
“Some” is another vague weasel word here. Some could be two or three muslims. This is not a majority opinion in muslim society, not even close. Rather, the hadith has split into multiple schools of thought, some more radical than others. The Taliban and Al Queda generally come from the ultra-conservative wing, the Hanbali school of Hadith thought, based in Saudi Arabia. Places governed under this tradition often post Islam as the state religion and punish conversion away from Islam with death.
Simply because the modern organs of government control hadn’t been invented back then. This isn’t much of an argument.
Iran just banned a videogame. That’s not a free market. And a stop clock is right twice a day.
For people who believe in non-aggression, Islam is one of the most evil schools of philosophy in the world because it uses religious rationales to justify acts of aggression up to and including mass murder. Islam was spread by the sword from its founding day. Many muslim countries still give the death penalty to those who convert to other religions. Muslims issue death threats and carry them out aginst people who draw pictures of Mohammed. Etc., etc. List could go on forever.
The quotations are used because I was using it as an empty set, and giving it to whom ever to define - as in the term has no specific meaning for me or my purposes- but could mean what ever you want in the broadest to narrowest of ways. So to say “support anarchism” I would accept that definition and go from there.
To me Islam is to follow Quran alone- and Quran never advocates to begin aggression but only for self defense. This is repeated more than once in Quran- I easily consider most “Muslim” countries today to be abominations. I consider it the same way people falsely equate the United States as an example of a free-market.
I don’t issue death threats to anyone and I don’t know any Muslims that do. The list of people who don’t agree with any of that can go on forever. (especially since theres no Quranic decree to kill anyone that draws pictures or insults Islam)
How did Islam make it to China after its founding? Was it an army that came in and built mosques?
Anyway don’t be so boring and paint everyone that calls themselves Muslim with a broad brush. Its just childish and shows you have a really strong emotional ties to popular news stories that were never your own personal experience.
On the contrary many Hadith are considered fabricated by quite a lot of people.
To me Islam is to follow Quran alone- and Quran never advocates to begin aggression but only for self defense. This is repeated more than once in Quran- I easily consider most “Muslim” countries today to be abominations. I consider it the same way people falsely equate the United States as an example of a free-market.
Yes. You prove my point.
auctionguy10, do you think islam generally preaches a libertarian view?
Praxeologically, we know that Islam couldn’t have been that libertarian becuase a look at its history shows that it never valued libertarianism and that its society began unlibertarian and continued unlibertarian. It had merchants, it imported watermelons from india, it rebuilt the iraqi aqueducts, etc. but it simply didn’t value liberty very highly if it embarked on several rather vast conquests of byzantine/french/chinese/indian territory, burned down the library of alexandria, and repeatedly attacked italy, austria, and constanstinople. Religious tolerance was always a rather equivocal thing in every civilization and no less in islam where I recall that it was considered evil for muslim doctors to treat christians and where al-ghazali’s school stiffled natural theologians working in the traditions of avicenna or averroes. It was even considered a rather borderline sacrilege for a muslim to paint portraits of the sultan, so that Suleiman had to hire italian artists to paint his likeness.
Now from some other POV islam might be libertarian but I’m just saying that islam has never made anyone (except for a minority) value liberty more. Perhaps the doctrine itself is libertarian but the way it was incorporated into the value scales of others perverted it. In any case it seems that you should just post quotes of the Quran if you think that the doctrine is per se libertarian.
V = victory. This is correct.
This is reason why economics progressed only when religious shackles were thrown off and anthropomorphism and special causation became insults (e.g., Spencer, Jevons, and Mises used these in such way).
It started no less with author of Theodicy: Leibniz wrote in his published physics papers that God is not explanation for anything which can be explained by dynamical equations (which is everything except origin of universe) and in his legal works that rationality means goal choosing given beliefs of how to achieve goals = no such thing as altruism.
Newton thought this was heresy and hence followed their famous debate (Leibniz vs. Newton’s followers) of letters, which published his ideas in english (as opposed to latin and french).
Condillac came and said that soul = brain, brain = soul, and that experience and conditioned reflexes determine much of our perception. Then he introduced opportunity cost.
Thus began foundations of economics, when Cantillon, Locke, North wrote more on the economics side, followed by Condillac’s second book.
Notice, all this was based around dynamical laws, independent of state sanction or supernatural intervention. It was done by Christains who were basically considered heretics to large extent!
(Leibniz => considered heretical and kicked out of royal society, Locke => thought to be too atheistic, even by Hume, who was his follower, Condillac => adored by French revolutionaries after his death…)
Contemporary Roman sources say that the Library of Alexandria was accidentally burned down by troops of Julius Caesar in 48BC. The story that it was a Caliph was propagated by Saladin in the 13th Century to make his own destruction of (Islamic) religious texts he disagreed with seem less egregious by precedent.
The argument could be made that secular powers take advantage of religion to further their own agendas.
So basicly you are saying that 95 % of muslims are not following islam?
So basicly you are saying that 95 % of muslims are not following islam?
Most of the world’s Muslims live in states which have manipulated Islam to make it statist. Most of those regimes were propped up by western governments not Muslims themselves. Islam advocates anarchy.
A quick googling of ‘anarchism and islam’ will bring up all sorts of results which prove my point.