AH: More Progressive Islam

And it is my understanding that, as the early Muslims encountered the Christians, the Muslims were percevied as a new sort of Arianism by many.

I'm not too sure. Nikephoros' description is not really paying attention to religious claims of Arabs, and call them "pagans" for exemple (as for conquered provinces' population, Islam not being entierly structured at this point, they might not have found a really well defined difference).

From what I gather, identification with Arians came later, with John of Damascus. It might be more of a rationalisation on Islam, than a spontaneous identification.

As for western Christiendom...Religious identification is barely a thing up to later times, with Islamized Arabs not being fully distinguished from classical mentions.
Not that they're not considered as outside Christianity (Saraceni can name as well Arabs than what remain of pagans or half-pagan populations), but outside that, it's generally nonsense or "something that Christians don't do".

IIRC, even IXth Adoptianism (which may have some islamic influence) isn't related to the Arabo-Islamic domination in Spain.
 
According to them and muslims they aren't. Even though they are in the muslim league. They don't follow the five pillars and their praying is realy different.

I'm pretty sure Alevis do consider themselves Muslims. And I don't really see why the majority sect of any religion should be able to define who does and does not count. Most Sunnis don't even accept Shias as Muslims.
 
I'm pretty sure Alevis do consider themselves Muslims. And I don't really see why the majority sect of any religion should be able to define who does and does not count. Most Sunnis don't even accept Shias as Muslims.

quite this would be rather like acceptintg the puritan's definition of quakers
 
I had a though...

Is there any possibility for any Muslim to become heavily influenced from the European Enlightenment? I've kinda entertained the notion of Muslim slaves in the Americas (like the Caribbean) being influenced by Enlightenment Philosophy and create a Secular Islamic Republic where their faith intermizes with the European liberal ideals.
 
I had a though...

Is there any possibility for any Muslim to become heavily influenced from the European Enlightenment? I've kinda entertained the notion of Muslim slaves in the Americas (like the Caribbean) being influenced by Enlightenment Philosophy and create a Secular Islamic Republic where their faith intermizes with the European liberal ideals.

Already explored in a timeline by Jonathan Edelstien, Male Rising.

In other news, there's this person; he's not fully progressive, but he's taking steps in the right direction.
 
I'm pretty sure Alevis do consider themselves Muslims. And I don't really see why the majority sect of any religion should be able to define who does and does not count. Most Sunnis don't even accept Shias as Muslims.

There's a subsect of Alevis, much derided by the majority, who trace their roots back to the Luwians and Hittites instead of the Muslim Scholar who founded the sect.

This subsect, Ishikism, has been thoroughly discredited by the main Alevi sect.
 
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The Islamic World had fallen behind long before it started getting colonised by the Europeans; in fact, the reason Europeans were able to colonise large swathes of the region was precisely because it had fallen behind.

(Unless you're counting the Crusader States, but (a) it's not really accurate to equate them to 19th- and 20th-century colonial empires, and (b) they only ever controlled a very small portion of the Middle East, certainly not enough to "plague" an entire civilisation.)

Remember, everything bad in the world is Europe's fault. :rolleyes:
 
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