Fourth Week Response

Still Intrigued by Islam…

To be honest, a couple of year ago I was very intrigued with Islam.  I had many friends who are from the Middle East and I always liked the way they were so close to their families.  I always wanted to talk about their religion because it was something that they, as many other religions, protect very much.  I would ask questions about meanings and or their verses, but they would always just give me a little explanation and change the subject.  For a world religion class I took a couple of years ago I was given more information and I even had the experience of going to a Mosque and see what their religious life is like.  Like in the chapter it’s explained, it is a monotheistic religion that “presents Allah as the only God, the all-powerful Creator, good, just, and merciful” (p304).  In the chapter, it is also described how this religion reveals the message of God through prophet Mohammad and that it was very revolutionary because unlike the other Polytheistic religions at the moment it required the submission of the followers to believe in one God.  At the same time, Strayer specifies that during the early stages of Islam becoming a religion, women were seen as equals, they were no less than their opposite gender which is completely different from what it has been lately seen in various regions in the Middle East.  Like any other religion it has pros and cons, or rephrasing this and speaking from a religious point of view, lots of dogmas that followers have to believe by means of faith.  What really gets me thinking is how such beautiful philosophy of being merciful and helping others can be altered and completely misunderstood.  For example, if it’s a religion that invites people to be merciful, how come many of the countries in the Middle East treat each other so bad and are always at war.  Also, how come some men treat women very disrespectful and act very condescending towards them.  One of the reasons I believe causes this type of behavior is the fact that for Islam politics and religion are not independent of each other.  I think that man by nature always want to be the alpha in Politics, so when it comes to making decisions for a country and being able to be more dominant for some reason believe they are better than females.  I might be wrong and many of you might not agree with me, but I think that could be one of many reasons.  Another reason might be the “sharia”, which it was “concerned with correct behavior in every aspect of religious and social life” (p313).  In their society women are supposed to be submissive and follow what the man says, which leads to “distraction and deviation from the purer spirituality of Muhammad’s time: (p313).

Mongols and China

In chapter 12 we read about the Mongols, their pastoral and nomadic societies, but most importantly about their military vision.  What’s important to know about Mongols is how their “revolution of domestication” helped their people live in more “favored environments”.  This domestication helped them to have a very promising economic foundation. The Mongols nomad societies did not focus in having very elaborate structures, such as those of other empires; on the other hand, their focus on agriculture and animal herds.  

Something really interesting about the Mongols was their vision of women.  Compared to Islam, which I talked about earlier, Mongols had women in a higher status and had fewer restrictions. “[women] had a greater role in public life than their sisters in agricultural civilization” (p335), women also had to take care of their families and they did not have “negative connotations” like for example the Chinese had with their women. I am a woman and I see that as a positive characteristic of the Mongol society, I also believe women had more chance to do so because men were more focused on their military success.