Time Wasting Religion Webinar, 21st Century Nazism In Ukraine and stuff

 1.  The dispute in the Ukraine has been ongoing for much longer than what most people know.  It is also an ethnic confrontation between the Ukrainian people and native Russian speakers who share the same space. 

However there is also a significant ultra-right wing, Nazi movement that has taken root in the Ukraine.  President Putin is not too far off when he says he wants Ukraine to be rid of Nazis. Of course the Nazis are the people who invaded Russia during WW2. 

Although the Nazis were created in Germany there were significant numbers of Nazis in eastern Europe (Rumania, Hungary etc) as well as in the United Kingdom and the USA.

Two very famous Nazi sympathisers were ex-King Edward of Great Britain (the guy who abdicated the throne to marry Mrs Wallace Simpson) and the American aviator Charles Lindbergh. In the 1930s there was a British "Nazi" Party led by Oswald Mosley.

In Ukraine today the Nazis (neo-Nazis, pro-Nazis etc) have their own militia known as the Azov Battalion.  Thats them carrying their Nazi flag in the top two pictures.

The swastika type symbol is called a 'wolf-angel' in German ('wolf ang-gel). Wolfangel literally means a 'wolf hook' - a cruel device used in Germany to bait and catch wolves.

The 'wolfangel' symbol was adopted by the Nazis in WW2. In the lower two pictures you can see the same wolfangel was the emblem of the Nazi 2nd SS Panzer Division. The SS were the nasties.

 

So the Ukrainian Nazis wish to be the "wolfangels" of the 21st century. 

2. This morning I spent about an hour and a half in a webinar about religion. It was time wasted for the speaker. These folks are really wasting their lives talking endlessly about religion. 

Answering a question about caravan raiding or ghazw the speaker said it was the practise at that time. He said the same thing to a question on child marriage - it was the common practise at that time.

The religious folks do use the term jahiliya (ignorant) to describe the pre-Islamic Arabs.

I listen in to these discussions to pick up titbits and to ask questions. The speaker mentioned that Imam Hanbali (the 'founder' of one of the four Sunni sects) said that "three things have no basis in religion the tafseer (interpretation), the seerah (biography)" and I did not hear the third. 

He also said that Ibn Ishaq called Imam Malik 'the son of a slave' while Malik called Ibn Ishaq a 'Dajjal'.

The speaker said some things about the nabi's birthday, the day he died and the day when the nabi first received the revelation  all falling on Monday the 12th of Rabbiul Awwal.  What a coincidence.

You know things like that. 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.