muslims invented hamams and saunas

nj, your this post should have come onto this thread, but if you compare CONTEMPORARY Muslim societies with CONTEMPORARY west, you're really enacting a fallacy because modern Muslim states don't implement the Shariah, and they have made a mockery of Islam with what they DO implement.

we're trying to compare states where Shariah is implemented verses your more enlightened western model of today.

 

as for your point about sexual promiscuity i think that a middle ground is the best solution and i think you will find if you care to look and read a little on the subject that in terms of sex crimes and abuse "muslim" lands are as bad or probably worse than the "West". in fact i cannot think of a single sexual or moral depravity which occurs in the west but does not occur in the east/islamic lands.
the only difference is here people do it openly and there it is hidden. also here such crimes are recorded whereas there often they are not. sadly in muslim countries men tend to get away with it but the only one's ever punished by the guardians of morality are either poor people or women. and the other negative effect of making such a big deal about sex is that it leads to a so-called "honour-based culture" where a woman's honour is linked to her sexuality and thus honour killings (where a brother or father or relative will kill the poor woman for some percieved slight on their "izzat" because she talked to another guy or she refuses to marry or she falls in love with someone of the wrong cast. i am not blaming islam but its interpretation/implementation in muslim countries.

of course the moral teachings of islam are beautiful and if these are taught to people from a young age at home, at school, and by the media and reinforced by society at large by example they can lead to a balanced society. we do not need to ban everything at a state level as if you ban something people will do it twice as much!

i'm probably not making much sense but the older i have gotten and i have travelled a fair deal in the world i have noticed that when you force something onto people they end up hating it and if you ban something or criminalise it it just goes underground. much better and healthier to legalise it and thereby control it in a healthy manner. those who are God-fearing will not do these things anyway but what use is a person's prayer, to take an example, if you know he is only praying because he is scared of going to prison or of being beaten. the best example is iran. they have had an islamic republic which has enforced shariah law of the ja'afari variety and most iranians you meet end up hating islam and it hasn't stopped all the moral laxity in society either except on the visual level. same thing with saudi. don't tell me a sunni islamic republic of pakistan or morocco etc. would be any different. the most islamic and healthiest society i have seen from the muslim countries is turkey which has a much more open attitude to these things and is officially secular even tho it has an islamic party in power and the rulers are extremely pious. if you give people choice you can tell the wheat from the chaff.

 

the earlier ones were even awliyaa, like Fatih Sultan Mehmet rahimahullah who conquered Istanbul.

doesn't mean all were the same. the latter ones were more indulgent.

again, as i said, don't forget to factor in slavery in those times and the ahkam for slaves. it makes a world of a difference as far as fiqh rulings go.

 

you kidding me? have you ever mingled with western men?

they even lust after their best friends wives and the minute he leaves the room they'd collectively drool all over her and this is no exaggeration?! i can cite a thousand examples of western men doing this.

for all their tharkiness, i have never seen arab or muslim men perve on a friends wife OPENLY, calling their mates to do the same. if they get any filthy thoughts, they keep it to themselves.

seriously, where exactly in the west do you live! do you EVER step out of your den reading books written by orientalists?

i suppose all those catholic church abuse cases must be from the pakistani catholic churches, friends of qardinul tahir, eh?

i would say you're confused, but after this many times you playing the same old track, i'm forced to say - your arguments are pathetic nj, feel sorry for you!

 

aq,
ok if i accept your POV then please answer this: at the time we are talking about the muslims had a caliphate and shariah--hanafi in the case of the ottomans--was the law of the land. now if all these things were so clearly haram as current scholars depict than surely the ottoman sultans--who by and large were very pious--would have had them outlawed or banned. but we do not find that is the case.

i'm glad you mentioned local folk music with stringed instruments. because that is also something which can demonstrably be proven to have existed throughout the ottoman lands and before them during the ummayad and abbasid caliphates too, and in the muslim india and in andalusia and in the persian world, via contemporary historic records, and so one has to ask--assuming that the fiqh rulings were the same as now--that either the rulers didn't care or they didn't enforce these rulings or that they weren't able to enforce them or that the scholars had different rulings. i know, for example, that the ottoman shaykhs ruled military marching music and other military music as allowed to build the moral of the troops. you can go to istanbul to this day and find reenactments of ottoman military music complete with drums, trumpets etc. so this idea of an ideal islamic past is just so much wishful thinking; it seems the average person just led there lives not much different to today what with folk music, hamams, belly-dancing and wine flowing freely [just read the arabian nights for social history or the poems of khayyam or abu nawas etc.] and yet the scholars always seemed to be scolding the people and bemoaning "the good old days!" in reality the only difference seems to be then that muslims held political and military and economic power as opposed to now.

 

i have moved this post here.

there is a regional saying, that goes: "where the headman is worried about his village, his daughter is worried about her marriage".

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you've got to be kidding me!

who has ever said that EVERY thing Muslims ever came up with is good?

since we're Qadiris, read up on what Ghawth-e-A3zdham has to say in his Ghuniyah on the concept of hamams!

you must know that at the peak of their power and conquests, many Muslims were extremely indulgent! just because they won a battles against the kuffaar and built some grand mosques, doesn't mean EVERY thing they did was right. this goes for almost all Muslim empires.

plus don't forget in those times, they even had slavery (in case you're thinking harems and other stuff). the hijab rules for slaves and free people are different. there are a totally different set of ahkam for slaves.

what will you say to the cultural turkish and arab belly dancing? is what goes on now, a part of "Muslim" tradition?

or the traditional music of these lands with stringed instruments and flutes and all? (not talking nasheeds, qawwalis etc)

as long as they cover their minimum required 3awrah*, they're not sinning. mind you the rule of adolescents being treated like women is ONLY for those men who have homosexual tendencies towards such adolescents.

as far as "traditional" or "cultural" hamams go, at least in the turkish and moroccan ones i have seen, even to this day, they have separate hamams for men and women. (the men and women may not cover their stipulated 3awrah in front of their own comrades/sisters, but thats another issue)

i assume you're talking about europe, and that's not our culture to start with, even if we go by our unIslamic "cultural" model.

i suppose your western model is working better than the Islamic rulings then?

what is the alternative?

and how is it making society any safer from promiscuity and sex crimes and vices?

*there is the minimum required 3awrah to be covered in front of the same gender; and the minimum required 3awrah to be covered in front of the other gender.

 

thanks AH, AQ and gg.

i respect the opinion of the scholars but it does seem a bit unduly harsh...wasn't it muslims who invented the hamam and the concept of wellness/saunas/massages? going by what AQ posted it would seem that most people have been doing sin then in going to hamams aka turkish baths especially the ottomans as men of all ages and boys/adolescents went (still go) there and, dare I say it, women too in adjacent rooms and here (in the EU) mixed sex saunas are common. doctors will often prescribe such treatments for health benefits.

what bothers me -and i know i will be crucified by the usual suspects!--is that a lot of the time the underlying basis for so many of these rulings seems to be that men are so out of control sexually that the merest glance/glimmer/touch of a female will send them into uncontrollable sexual desire and they will commit lust/zina! it isn't a very charitable view of mankind. logically metihnks that if you keep men and women so separated it leads to this abnormal behaviour; it is noticeable by me when i go to a country like pakistan --and i have heard it is even more true of arab countries--where society practices --to an extent--the separation of the sexes in public life that the men there look at women much more lustfully than in countries which have a more relaxed attitude to it such as in europe and the USA. and they seem to be much more "Tharkii" (don't know the correct translation of that--"sleazy?") and when muslim women go from here to there they often complain of being sexually harassed even in the mosques let alone the bazaars!