Israel is under constant threat from Hamas in Gaza, Israel, by Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in both Iraq and Syria, by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, by Iran, and by Saudi Arabia, with even Türkiye becoming an unstable ally as the Türkish state rescinds upon its secular legacy as the 21st century proceeds onward, embracing Islam and neo-Ottoman foreign policy
Islamic gardens act as symbolic representation of the archetypal eternal heavenly garden, an attempt to provide a small peak into what could potentially wait for a person in the afterlife. Repetition of geometric shapes in Islamic gardens help to emphasize the link between the physical world and thereafter. Circular fountains represent Jannah, the Islamic representation of heaven, as the circle is symbolic of heaven. The square is always utilized as a symbol of the Earth, with circular fountains often found within square indentations to act as a metaphor for heaven and Earth meeting. The term “Jannat-al-Firdaws” which means “Garden of Paradise” in Arabic, is mentioned many times throughout the Quran, with Chapter 55 of Surat al-Rahman (pronounced “suu-rat al rack-man”), which means the “all merciful” in Arabic, holding the best and most descriptive accounts of what this garden truly would look like if experienced. Water plays a crucial role in these accounts, with multiple layers of symbolism for life present which is why water is the most important element within an Islamic garden as it is symbolic of the soul. Rain was and continues to be viewed as a merciful gift from heaven within Islamic culture as Islam stems from one of the hottest regions in the world. Water is essential to Islam and an Islamic paradise garden cannot exist without the incorporation of water to some degree. Islamic gardens are separated into 4 specific quadrants because of the “chahar bagh” (pronounced “cha-harr bahh”) which means “4 gardens” in the Persian language of Farsi, directly related to the 4 rivers of paradise, including a river of milk, honey, wine, and water, an order and harmony which underlies everything within an Islamic garden
The Japanese Shinto religion translates to mean “way of the gods” in Japanese and primarily focuses upon ancestors and nature, with practitioners believing that every aspect of the universe has a deity (e.g. rivers have a god, mountains have a god, soil has a god etc.) with ancestors believed to have created the world for the current generation living within it. Japanese architecture is an excellent example of Shintoism as Shinto shrines are left in a minimalist state of color and simplicity, unlike contemporary Chinese architecture which is highly colorful and decorative. Shinto shrines never depict imagery of deities as the wood of the architecture itself is representative of nature, and from that simplicity and minimalism. This is also because it is believed that so many gods exist within nature that it would be foolish to only highlight a few in particular. Practitioners of Shinto observe festivals and holidays but no particular day of prayer, unlike monotheistic religions (e.g. Sunday for Christianity, Friday for Islam and Judaism etc.). There is no mainstay scripture of morality or ethical system attached to Shintoism. In Shintoism, old shrines are dismantled and moved for new shrines to be erected every 20 years. The 3 main elements of Shintoism are the mirror, precious stones, and wood
The Baptistère de Saint Louis was created by Malmuk craftspeople to be used as a luxury bowl to hold holy water during christenings, in fact King Louis XIII used the same object during his christening as an infant. Despite being created by Islamic craftspeople and depicting graphic violence of decapitation and limb severance, the Baptistère de Saint Louis was used for hundreds of years, seemingly without conflict between Islamic and Christian traditions and viewpoints. The object itself is a basin of metal and copper alloy which is inlayed with silver and was crafted in Syria or Egypt during the mid 14th century
The term “Islam” is an Arabic term which means “surrender” or “submission” in reference to Allah, with the intention of the term “Islam” to indirectly mean “to submit to God’s will”
It is estimated that the Chinese government is holding more than 1,000,000 (1 million) practitioners of Islam in detention camps, the largest incarceration of an ethnic group since World War II. Holding facilities used to house detainees utilize the latest, most advanced technology in development, technology which is actively being tested to better control human beings. Chinese technology has advanced to the point that words spoken over telephone conversations can trigger surveillance so those with families inside detention centers often talk using coded language when using any type of telecommunications device. In 2009, thousands of Chinese Uyghur’s (pronounced “wee-gurr”) rioted in China’s Xinjiang province, the primary location of most Chinese Uyghur people. This riot was caused after a peaceful protest had gone awry due to law enforcement suppression, with the protests originally being conducted because of 2 Uyghur practitioners who were killed by the Chinese state. Almost 200 people, mainly Han Chinese were killed in this conflict. In the aftermath of this event, in an attempt to suppress any further activity, an unknown number of Uyghur were murdered and thousands imprisoned. President Xi Jinping appointed Chen Quanguo (pronounced “Chen Chang-gu-woa”), a strong arm tactical leader who had earned a reputation as an enforcer after pacifying Tibet. Quanguo elevated security in Xinjing against the Uyghur people, to suppress any future insurrection. Xi’s government decided that Xinjing’s 13,000,000 (13 million) Muslims would be treated as potential terrorists despite evidence which explicitly states that an extremely small minority of Uyghur people identify with the ideology of insurgency, separatism, and militancy. China has developed a ranking system which consists of 100 points, denoting somebody as a safe person. 10 points are deducted for each category which applies to an individual (e.g. identifying as Uyghur, being between the ages of 15 – 55, having knowledge of Islam, engaging in regular prayer, relatives living abroad, holding an active passport etc.). The Chinese government soon realized that the number of people who would be deemed unsafe in reference to this new system was quite large which is why enormous holding camps were developed upon an industrial scale. The Chinese government initially denied the existence of these facilities but satellite imagery clearly and definitively prove their construction and use. It is believed by western intelligence that there are now up to 1200 camps in operation. Facilities are highly regulated with moveable cameras in each dormitory and classroom, and detainees are permitted no more than 2 minutes in the bathroom before running the risk of being struck in the head with a electric baton prod. There have been accounts by detainees of other prisoners who were treated so poorly that their mental health began to decline into madness. The scale of this operation has caused some children to lose both parents which is why specialized orphanages have been setup to take care of children left behind by their incarcerated guardians. The Chinese government has recorded footage from within the camps to portray for the outside world the narrative that these facilities are nothing more than re-education centers. In reality, these highly polished videos have more in common with tourism advertisements than they do with journalism as the facilities are depicted to be much better than they actually are in terms of treatment of those imprisoned and the conditions presented to them. A large majority of Han Chinese are in favor of these facilities as racial bias, prejudice, and Islamaphobia is commonplace against the Uyghur ethnicity in China. Many Han believe the propaganda which has been fed to them, leading them to believe that the Uyghur people are of a lower intelligence quotient than Han Chinese and that they are incapable of doing anything outside of agrarian tasks like herding sheep. Detainees are actively being experimented upon to develop technologies which will forever change the modern world in respect to surveillance. The Chinese government has employed a tiered process for surveillance of the Uyghur people which begins with video surveillance setup outside of the home and ramping up to having flagged identification so that whenever law enforcement or checkpoints are present, a person is stopped and questioned, possibly being detained. All intelligence information is fed into a central system referred to as the “Public Security Database”. All Uyghur people have been instructed by the government to visit local police precincts to submit forensic data regarding themselves including vocal samples of ones voice which provides a unique voice signature, three dimensional facial scans, fingerprints, blood samples, and even deoxyribonucleic acid samples. The Chinese government is running specialized programs in Xinjing entitled “Homestay” and “Becoming Family” which sends uninvited Han Chinese workers into the homes of Uyghur people with the official statement stating that these programs are designed to promote national unity and harmony. The visitors sent out are described by authorities as “relatives” of the Uyghur people, but in reality, these people act as agents of the state, collecting, recording, and submitting intelligence via surveillance at an intimate and personal level which is inside of the home. Each person being monitored is provided a biographical profile so that the Chinese government understands how large or little a threat a person truly is. Many Uyghur households are individually marked with quick response barcodes, often referred to as “QR codes”, the same kind used on social media to photograph and pull up information instantly. Law enforcement frequent homes with quick response codes marked on the front door of a home upon a regular basis to scan it and ensure that only those who are registered for the home are present within it. Smartphones are examined at the various law enforcement outposts setup across the province to ensure the public is complying with the rules and regulations setforth by the state. Anyone caught violating any of these rules is subject to immediate arrest and detention with many examples of people being imprisoned for innocuous offenses (e.g. 12 months of incarceration for installing WhatsApp upon a smartphone). In addition to this, all Uyghurs are required to instal a Chinese government app which monitors their devices for suspicious activity. This level of intrusiveness is unprecedented in the modern world, as no country other than China employs such aggressive measures to surveillance it’s people. Xinjing has been labeled by experts to be the most tightly controlled and regulated region in the world, a surveillance state which surpasses all others, teetering upon the borderline of science fiction in terms of the Chinese governments reach, breadth, and depth of intelligence. The Chinese company Leon is helping to build the infrastructure needed to create a seemingly impregnable surveillance state, developing technologies and strategies which most likely will be rolled out across China and into other countries which want to adopt and license the technology from China, which provides a dual benefit effect as the Chinese government then owns the worlds best surveillance systems to surveil its own people as well as the ability to sell these technologies to the highest bidding countries and organizations, providing an economic incentive for China to continue developing and pushing the boundaries of what is possible with this bleeding edge technology. It should be noted that Leon is only one of many companies working with and for the Chinese state to develop surveillance technologies. Foreign nations outside of China have done little to protest the development and implementation of these technologies in an concerted effort to ensure economic relationships with China remain un-jeopardized. Measures to eradicate the Uyghur people and culture to the point of annihilation have recently been increased with physical, visual evidence recorded of bulldozers demolishing traditional Uyghur housing in Kashgar, China as part of the Communist Parties housing modernization and development program. Satellite imagery definitely demonstrates that symbolic destruction is occurring in tandem with the domes and minarets of mosques being dismantled and removed from at least 2 dozen Islamic religious sites as of 2019. The Chinese government emphatically states that human rights are not violated in re-education centers and that cruelty is strictly prohibited with detainees free to apply for consent to leave at any time. These claims however have not been verified and evidence to the contrary has been overwhelmingly collected and distributed by western media organizations. The Chinese government is heavily focusing upon indoctrinating the current generation of young Uyghur children, forbidding the usage of indigenous language and cultural practices in an effort to assimilate young Uyghur children into becoming Chinese citizens identical to the Han Chinese which is the predominant ethnicity of China, comprising 92% of the total population, a figure which means that 19% of the worlds total population identify as Han
Carpet weaving is thought to have originated in Central Asia more than 2000 years ago, but it was the Islamic culture which shifted it into an art form. Many Islamic traditions have long frowned upon the depiction of sentient beings depicted in western art and because of this, carpet makers created landscapes of bright colors and complex patterns, with the mark of different tribes and ethnic groups recognized by the various dyes and pattern styles utilized. Patterns are so prevalent in Islamic culture because it is a form of expression which is permitted, unlike many others which go against the direct teachings of the Quran. It’s common for patterns to contain an eye somewhere along the line as a protective measure, or a small script to give thanks and praise to Allah, and sometimes even small depictions of hidden meanings like the head of a bird without the rest of its body. Typically, duplicates of the same Islamic carpet are not created, as the artist who created the original design did so because they felt a particular emotion during the creative process and because the same mood is or was not felt during the next carpet, the design is different to reflect the new mood experienced. The golden age of the Islamic carpet occurred during the 17th century when landscape art worked its way into these carpets causing them to become portable gardens of paradise. The images portrayed were not intended to hold a mirror up to nature, but to reflect what human beings value most of nature
Prior to the development of the methods and tools used for scientific analysis, many Europeans regarded Egypt as the birthplace of civilization. This meant that Napoléon Bonaparte was free to invade Egypt because the French people viewed his campaign as a way of leading themselves back to the source of their roots. Bonaparte did not only bring soldiers, he also brought scholars who were tasked to observe and record the knowledge gained while in Egypt. This acquisition of knowledge made information about Egypt available to the public through books filled with illustrations and writing about Egyptian culture, its people, and its landmarks. Elements of Egyptian culture started to work their way into European culture and even reach out west as far as the new colonies of the United States of America, with examples like the pyramid on the back of U.S. currency and the obelisk shaped Washington Monument in Washington D.C., United States of America. Bonaparte’s campaign was the most significant European foray into the Islamic world since the Crusades
Prior to the development of the methods and tools used for scientific analysis, many Europeans regarded Egypt as the birthplace of civilization. This meant that Napoléon Bonaparte was free to invade Egypt because the French people viewed his campaigns as a way of leading themselves back to the source of their roots. Bonaparte did not only bring soldiers, he also brought scholars who would observe and record the knowledge gained while in Egypt. This acquisition of knowledge made information about Egypt available to the public through books filled with illustrations and writing about Egyptian culture, its people, and its landmarks. Elements of ancient Egypt started to work their way into European culture and even reach out west as far as the new colonies of the United States of America, with examples like the pyramid on the back of U.S. currency and the obelisk Washington Monument in Washington D.C.. Bonaparte’s campaign was the most significant European foray into the Islamic world since the Crusades
In Indonesia, during the 16th century (although various sources of contrasting Islamic documentation state Islamic traders brought Islam to Indonesia in the 8th century), Islam had mass appeal to the general population. Islam strictly forbade discrimination and idolation of any monarchy or royal bloodline, and gave the common people the same opportunity to ascend to paradise as their rulers did. Islam does not have an intermediary when dealing with divine power which further made the religion attractive to the native islanders. These values made Islam more liberating in comparison to Hinduism and Buddhism which were the dominant religions at the time. The most recent mass conversion to Islam was during the fall of communism in Indonesia in 1965. Massive and brutal murders of Communist Party of Indonesia members occurred in the late 1960’s as the accepted convention at the time was that communists were atheists and atheists were therefore communists. The safest method to ensure survival during this turbulent time, especially for the indigenous Javanese who adhered to local indigenous religions, was to declare themselves Muslim so they would not be mistaken for communists and by default, atheists