A World without Mohammed

Valdemar II

Banned
Actually in original Islam women do have rights to own property and to divorce. Some puritanical ulemas actually got jailed for arguing that women have the right to divorce. But Islam, like other religions, could hardly escaped from bendings....

Wome can get inheritance in Islam, but certainly it's quite hard. OTOH, a woman's income, whether married or not, is basically her own wealth, while a married man's income is mostly his family's property....

I never said that women didn't in Islamic societies, there's little doubt that in Arabia and Indus Valley Islam served as liberating force for womens, whom stopped being de facto property with the spread of Islam. But what I said was that while it served as a liberating force there. Other places in the world was just as or moreso "pro-women", and Islam had little influence on the spread on women rights in the west.
 

Skokie

Banned
In some way that's correct, in places like Arabia and the Indus valley Islam resulted in enourmous increase in womens right, but in Europe it's quite different while Roman law tended to be quite limiting for womans, Lombard law gave full inherience for womans, and Arabic visitors to Hedeby (Schleswig town) describes a society where womans owned property and had a right to divorce.

Not sure about the Lombards, but I think Christianity and Islam were regressions from Rome. Women were citizens in the later Roman period. They could own property, inherit property, and run their own businesses. Marriage was a free institution in Roman society that respected the individual will of each spouse, free from the sanctimony of religion. A man or woman could divorce without having to beg or plead his or her case before the state or a religious figure. In Europe, most people would not have the right to divorce, at all, until the 19th and 20th centuries.
 

Philip

Donor
The council was divided over the issue of the Doctrine of the Trinity and asked Constantine to decide and he came out in favour of the Trinity.

No. Not even close.

Arguably another decision would have meant no Christianity as we know it with Christ being regarded as a prophet rather than a deity which is what the Moslems believe.
Such a decision could never come from Nicea. The Arians would denounce it as heresy as quickly as the Niceans would. The dispute was not over whether or not Christ was God. It was a dispute of how He was God.

Arius himself wrote:

But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach? — that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, full God, the only-begotten, unchangeable. [Emphasis mine]

Read the confession of Ulfilas, a student of Eusebius, and one of the chief missionaries of Arianism:
I, Ulfila, bishop and confessor, have always so believed, and in this, the one true faith, I make the journey to my Lord; I believe in one God the Father, the only unbegotten and invisible, and in his only-begotten son, our Lord and God, the designer and maker of all creation, having none other like him (so that one alone among all beings is God the Father, who is also the God of our God).... [Emphasis mine]
They argue that his message was misunderstood or maybe if St Paul hadn't played a prominent role in propoagating the idea of Christ as a deity.
If you think this is true, then it might surprise you to learn that the Arians quoted the exact same texts, both Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, in defense of their position. They fully revered Paul and his teachings.
 
Last edited:
Top