Words that many of us should probably take to heart. Hmm? I've tried both, and believe me, there's no comparison
Adultery or Killing? Assalamualaikum Tellner, and Peace to all, Fitneh is worse than adultery? In my memory the saying goes that fitneh is crueler than killing! Fitnah lebih kejam daripada pembunuhan. I pray that we all are made safe from fitneh and killing. Warm salaams to all. KC
If only :bang: By the way Fitnah=Slander. Just thought I'd clarify for everyone Here's one "lain ladang, lain belalang" "Different field, different grasshopper"
SALAAMS BROTHER KIAI,ive seen you say a brother may be teaching cimande in u.k. at seven sisters masjdid...is this naqshbandia zawiya??i go to our naqshbandi mosque in burton(naqshbandi) when i get the oppurtunity...Inshallah i will get there more in 2006..i like all of your posts,very informative ,very honest,....what is the possibility to get in contact with brother in u.k. teaching??also i had a dear friend from sheffeild zawiya who passsed away last year and he taught silat,i want to get in touch with some of his friends across the pond..thankyou for any info---
Peace to All, Talking about wise words, I would like to highlight one wise advice from a Silat Guru. She was the Grandmaster of Seni Silat Harimau Berantai, and she once said to her students: "I can teach you 1000 ways on how to kill your foe, but once you killed him/her, I can't even teach you 1 way on how to bring him/her back to life." An advice we should always keep in mind. :Angel:
There are two sides to every sky... So, I looked up "Fitnah" in my Islamic dictionary: Well, okay, but I have no idea what an "Umma" is, so back to my handy Islamic dictionary I bought to have conversations with Mushtaq Ali, and I found this: Then, to top it off, my good friend that I have never met face to face, Gajah, called it "Slander". So, if I get you right, "Slander is worse than adultery". Which leads me to say, "By WHOSE criteria"? Adultery is pretty frickin' deep if you are in a relationship with someone for upteen years and get blindsided by it. However, Todd's point isn't lost on me, I'm just maybe being a little argumentative because I view adultery to be betrayal of the lowest order. But this is interesting to be brought up at this point in my day...I went to a muslim forum today & one post said "Don't fear the Kuffar". And let me tell you, it wasn't about universal brotherly love. And of course, I am included in that little piece of "slander", no matter how many Muslims, Christians or Jews I call "Friend", because I am one of those "Kafir", as I believe he was trying to say. I am an unbeliever. I am a person who does NOT submit. So, what does this make me in your (believer) eyes? If I eat a pork chop, drink a beer and love a woman who speaks her mind, what am I to you? Taking up space until Allah reigns judgement down? Just counting the minutes until this world is once again an all-Muslim planet, as it's written in your book? And if I see you are distressed and I offer my hand and say "Brother, let me help you", what does that make me? A sucker? An infidel that, were the roles reversed, you wouldn't stop the car except to watch me drown? Just another white guy with no Islamic name whose going to miss out on heaven when the horns blow? A wise man once said "On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers". "Slander" applies in more ways than one.
Heya Bobster, It's not any persons place to pass judgement on anybody ... but we all do it ... even I do, and so do you . Stay cool, stay easy! Salam
Hehe Bobbie, 3 am sounds familiar. I work in the security industry. What's your excuse? Salam and cheers!
Slander is worse than adultery. I've tried both, and believe me there's no comparison The original point was in reference to one of the periodic mudslinging parties that crops up here from time to time.
Kembang, I am a network engineer. In point of fact, I am the SOLE network engineer for an entire (large) company. Which means when the S hits the F, I get the absolute THRILL of staying all night to fix it. Luckily, I'm pretty good at this whole computer geek thing. Todd, I know. You were indeed making a sound point, and the topic is one that just gets my damn goat from time to time. Often takes a couple of chickens in the process as well. I used your post as a springboard, and I apologize. I had been stewing about the whole "Kafir" thing all day. I see it as an excuse to treat others as an animal if they don't think as you do, & was trying to rationalize it in my head when I saw your post. Anyway, yes, the mudslinging is something that always succeeds in directing your attention from the skill of a practitioner/teacher & pointing it to things that are often trivial and irrelevant. There is one thing that I would take exception to, though. Remember that post by Serakmurid that went WILDLY out of control, about an article in IKF about Pak Vic's "Beyond the Tiga" thing? (Incidentally, since "Tiga" just means "Three", we could say "Beyond the tiga is Empat, Lima, Enam, etc"...Just kidding) Anyway, remember how we all (myself included) jumped on his soul train about the post and let him have it, both barrels? I still stand by that. Not the more negative stuff of course, but the parts where all of us "former Serakkies" chimed in about the same man, from our own points of view. So I think, although it COULD be viewed as slander, it is sometimes a necissary evil. I wish someone had warned ME when I started with...Well, you know. I guess I could word that as "bringing up the negative points about someone or something isn't always slander."
Slander/Libel "Slander" is a false statement that is damaging to somebody's reputation, spoken aloud. "Libel" is when you write it down. In both cases, truth is a defense against the accusation. Saying something negative about somebody, e.g., "He's a liar, cheat, and womanzier." is only slander (or libel) if he is not these things. If a man steals money from you, calling him a thief is not slander, it is the truth. "Adultery," by legal definition, is voluntary sexual contact between a married person and somebody who is not that person's spouse. (In the old days, it meant sex between any two people who were not married, but that definition has been updated.) If you sneak around on your wife, you are technically an adulterer. Even if you do it with her consent, you an adulterer, for those of you who are swingers. If you are legally separated but still married, same deal. Most places in the U.S., these things are not prosecuted by the authorities, but most places still have laws on the books that will allow such prosecution if somebody wants to get nasty. Which is considered the greater crime, slander or adultery, depends on how you look at the world. Calling somebody a pompous idiot could be considered slander. Sleeping with your wife's sister is adultery. Which would you figure would be the more likely to get you your head handed to you if it becomes known ... ?
Caught sleeping with Tiel's hypothetical sister? I think I'd rather be trampled to death by wild donkeys. It would be faster and much less painful.
backbiting and adultery Posting twice in one lifetime, this is getting to be a habit. Todd, The actual saying that you are referring to is "Gheeba is worse than Zeena" (backbiting is worse than adultery) The full hadith is Further, backbiting is defined in Islam as this. Backbiting leads to "fitna" or strife and discord within the community and can destroy a whole community whereas adultery will usually just destroy a family. This should be fairly familiar being as the Silat community seems to list backbiting as one of its favorite pastimes. If anyone thinks that the backbiting that goes on within the Silat community has not done all of us great harm then they have not been paying attention. And Allah knows best.
Mushtaq, I agree with you completely. They don't call silat the art of infighting for nothing. There have been fights and arguments going on as long as I've been aware of the art, since the old newsgroup days. There have always been several fights going on, between high profile people as well as between high-profile people and low-profile people, unknowns or relative newcomers. The thing is, the high-profile guys get very offended when they're argued with by upstarts. So they have to defend their honor, and defend the art from the upstarts. The problem is, if you're an upstart, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by public attention from a Big Name. Let's say you become a very famous and respected pendekar, Mr. Ali Shah. And I remain a relative nobody (hey wait, that's like now...) And I start my own silat style. You know it's complete crap and I know it's complete crap, but I draw you into an argument. All of a sudden, my crap silat style gets a huge amount of exposure by virtue of your arguing with me. And you've just wasted some amount of your time on engaging in net arguments with some bozo. I think what it amounts to is a cultural difference. The old guard guys expect (rightly) to be respected. The upstarts don't respect them, and in fact treat them (and the art) with the utmost disrespect. In fact, I'd argue that they behave this way intentionally, with full knowledge of what they're doing, for profit. In South Asia, something would happen to guys who behave that way, and it wouldn't be enjoyable for anybody but the vultures. Here in the US? They hang out a shingle, lay out some cheap carpet and set up a dojo. Smart people will always be able to tell the difference. Stupid people will always be separated from their money by con artists and shills. It's my opinion as a rank beginner that the people who are legitimate are better off just ignoring the buzzing flies. "Never argue with an idiot. He'll just bring you down to his level and win by experience."
Rahayu everyone on this thread, In my opinion people will become unhappy if they believe that something or an idea that is important to them is diminished in some way, in this context I guess it would be the idea that something with history is somehow marred by the claims of an upstart and vice-versa the younger believe they have the where-with-all. In other words ... chest thumping doesn't win friends and often alienates people. The problem is that both sides tend to thump there respective chests and any chance of objectivity quickly vanishes out the window. Old is not guaranteed to be quality, and new is not guaranteed to be crappy. Even so, sometimes in this world people make claims to which they might not have any. This is guaranteed to produce the counter-effect of the people who defend the good name of the original. Really, so that the cycle of fitnah and in-fighting dies ... we could look to ourselves and honestly ask what our silat means to us as an individual. Just learn to let go, for silat is for our own development. Unfortunately it its easy to succumb to the temptation to use silat to inflate our egos (especially on the Internet where we can all be invincible warriors ). We all know the feeling when we do that. I believe the core of all truths lies within ourselves . Salam
Truth and Justice for All I think I understand the intent here, but I would offer a slightly different viewpoint or two: First, you can not know something because you have no experience with it. This is not necessarily stupidity, it can be simple ignorance. This is easily to cure, you merely apply knowledge. Second, Edmund Burke's Dictum: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. If you see a child about to pick up an asp because he doesn't know the snake is poisonous and can kill him, you can stand by and do nothing if that is the kind of person you are. No law says you must warn him, and you may not believe in sins of omission. If the boy knows the snake is deadly and knows what death is and he still wants to grab it, that's a different situation -- that's stupid. If someone stands up and slanders me or somebody I know, I can let it pass; however, by so doing, that might allow others to believe such a lie is true. If it wasn't then surely somebody would say so, right?
kerambit, What you say mirrors my own experience a great deal, though over the years I have see some of the high profile guys start as much problems as some of the low profile guys. All too true. I suppose one reason for the big names to want to keep everyone else down might be economics. I have suspected from time to time that one or two of the big names in our community might attack people in order to keep the competition down, a phenomena that used to be known as "protecting one's rice bowl". When I see Gheeba coming from a big name, usually the first thing I want to know is "do they make all their income from teaching Silat?" May Allah t'ala protect me from such a dire fate. For the sake of this discussion, how do I know that what you are doing is crap? Were you my student for any length of time? Have my students or I met you in any meaningful form of competition? How is it that I judge you as being crap? How much of my ego is tied up in that judgment? For me the exposure part means less than the wasting time part. As you get older you will understand that a lot more I like to think though that I have developed enough maturity in my art and as a person that I will be smart enough not to engage in such a transparent ploy To an extent I have to agree with you, there is a lack of respect sometimes shown by the younger to the older. (being one of the older I notice these things )On the other hand, a few of the old guard have proved themselves to be entirely reprehensible in their behavior. A certain amount of respect is due just because of having survived in the art for long enough to have become a teacher. The rest of the respect though comes from merit. If some of the old guard act like petulant children. or as if they have been eating mercury soaked tuna their whole lives, or misrepresent themselves as to their training, education,or history and then attack others because they are competition in some way, then they are not deserving of any great respect in my book. Even in these cases though, the backbiting we see going on serves no value other than to make silat something of a joke in the martial arts world. I have to say that I have seen this sort of thing go on in Indonesia more than one would suspect. Though the cultural differences make it look a bit different than what we see here. All too true. Though for every Silat style and teacher I bet I could find someone else who would put him or her in the category you have just mentioned I wish more people though this way, we would all be better off I think. Again, I wish more people had your perspective as well. The thing is Steve, in all the years I have known you I have never once seen you stoop to backbiting or personal attacks. When you challenge someone it is always fact based, logical and conforms to the rules of critical thinking. (and you are always polite unless sorely provoked, often even then) That is a whole different animal than what we are talking about here. If people kept discussions at that level then we would all be happier I think.
