Quote:

To make a long story short, after well over a year and a half of back and forth discussions and correspondences between my friend (and one other individual) with the office of Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Sadeq Hussaini Rohani in Qom, Iran < http://www.emamrohani.net>;; in mid March 2014, via email, the Grand Ayatollah issued a formal legal ruling (that is, a fatwa) determining the use of entheogens and psychoactive substances to be licit and thus permissible (ḥalāl) for Shi'i Muslims provided it be under the direction and supervision of qualified experts (ahl al-ikhtiṣāṣ), and that, moreover, such plant substances as a rule do not impair the mind. In the final missive before the decision, the questioner specifically underscored the issue of the visionary component of these plants, where people have reported visions of paradise and hell, and Grand Ayatollah Rohani’s fatwa finds no objections here either. Note that there are no exact specifications, or any lists given, in Grand Ayatollah Rohani’s fatwa as to which entheogens and psychoactive substances are meant to be included in the ruling and which ones are deemed to be excluded, albeit, as noted, my own discussion with the interlocutor began around the subjects of DMT, Ayahuasca and Haoma, and peripherally psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis and LSD as well (Ibogaine was also briefly mentioned in one discussion).


I had no direct role in the actual correspondence with Grand Ayatollah Rohani and his office, but I was approached several times during the course of these months for further input and clarifications by my friend and one other person. I was, however, kept abreast of developments during that period.
Now, I should underscore the fact that Grand Ayatollah Rohani is considered to be a source of emulation (marja'al-taqlīd), which is the highest rank a religious jurisprudent in Twelver Shi'ism can attain. There are only ever a handful of these, so his rank is the highest one can go.

During the course of the eighteen month dialogue, not a stone was left unturned by the Grand Ayatollah and his interlocutors, and he asked countless very pointed and precise questions, and in turn he was answered very precisely and with copious quotations, citations, clarifications and elaborations provided to him from Western academic source material (which were all very carefully translated for him into Arabic). These included Benny Shanon’s The Antipodes of the Mind (Oxford: 2002) as well as numerous articles from MAPS, selections from various other academic monographs, assorted published and unpublished anecdotal material, not to mention a plethora of online sources. To the best of our determination, during the course of this correspondence, the Grand Ayatollah became quite well acquainted with the issues involved, and in as much detail as could be given him during that time frame. Medical, pharmacological, neurological, ethnobotanical, legal, scriptural, theological, philosophical and, as mentioned, visionary (so esoteric and noetic) topics were all broached with him one by one, and in depth, so his final decision as a high Shi'i Muslim cleric and jurisprudent was as the result of a sound and well-informed overall grounding on most facets of the question.

---

Quote:

much of the thinking is capricious,
ok one day
not halal/kosher the next.

the views on the rights of women or the rights of jews provide a much more significant metric of modernity than the public stance on something less than 1% of the population will engage in (i.e. drugs used as entheogens).

---

Cannashroom said:

Many people view Islam as very backwards and obstructing of progressive change, and while I find this true on many fronts especially women's rights this is very interesting.

---

What I find very interesting is that some women don't even realise they are being oppressed. One I met in college tried to convince me that the koran is backed up by science. I was very curious so I asked her to give me some examples. She started mumbling about some lake or river and thats about it. The brainwash is strong with her!

Quote:

Here the grand Ayatollah is leading the religious as political world as being progressive.  After consulting numerous experts, scientific papers, anecdotal reports and etc he made a ruling base on logic and evidence as opposed to ideology.

---

Cannashroom said:

We hear lots about the clash between science and religion, but Islam seems to embrace it much more than say Christianity.  Evolution is accepted and even in the Quran it is mentioned that man came from Lower species.  It claims Allah increased the complexity of creation over time.

The Islamic world was advancing science for hundreds of years while the Christian world wa stuck in the dark ages.

Anyways I came upon this article recently and it was very interesting, both the revelation about the fatwa on psychedelics an also the discussions thereafter...

Ayahuasca and the Godhead

Quote:

To make a long story short, after well over a year and a half of back and forth discussions and correspondences between my friend (and one other individual) with the office of Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Sadeq Hussaini Rohani in Qom, Iran < http://www.emamrohani.net>;; in mid March 2014, via email, the Grand Ayatollah issued a formal legal ruling (that is, a fatwa) determining the use of entheogens and psychoactive substances to be licit and thus permissible (ḥalāl) for Shi'i Muslims provided it be under the direction and supervision of qualified experts (ahl al-ikhtiṣāṣ), and that, moreover, such plant substances as a rule do not impair the mind. In the final missive before the decision, the questioner specifically underscored the issue of the visionary component of these plants, where people have reported visions of paradise and hell, and Grand Ayatollah Rohani’s fatwa finds no objections here either. Note that there are no exact specifications, or any lists given, in Grand Ayatollah Rohani’s fatwa as to which entheogens and psychoactive substances are meant to be included in the ruling and which ones are deemed to be excluded, albeit, as noted, my own discussion with the interlocutor began around the subjects of DMT, Ayahuasca and Haoma, and peripherally psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis and LSD as well (Ibogaine was also briefly mentioned in one discussion).


I had no direct role in the actual correspondence with Grand Ayatollah Rohani and his office, but I was approached several times during the course of these months for further input and clarifications by my friend and one other person. I was, however, kept abreast of developments during that period.
Now, I should underscore the fact that Grand Ayatollah Rohani is considered to be a source of emulation (marja'al-taqlīd), which is the highest rank a religious jurisprudent in Twelver Shi'ism can attain. There are only ever a handful of these, so his rank is the highest one can go.

During the course of the eighteen month dialogue, not a stone was left unturned by the Grand Ayatollah and his interlocutors, and he asked countless very pointed and precise questions, and in turn he was answered very precisely and with copious quotations, citations, clarifications and elaborations provided to him from Western academic source material (which were all very carefully translated for him into Arabic). These included Benny Shanon’s The Antipodes of the Mind (Oxford: 2002) as well as numerous articles from MAPS, selections from various other academic monographs, assorted published and unpublished anecdotal material, not to mention a plethora of online sources. To the best of our determination, during the course of this correspondence, the Grand Ayatollah became quite well acquainted with the issues involved, and in as much detail as could be given him during that time frame. Medical, pharmacological, neurological, ethnobotanical, legal, scriptural, theological, philosophical and, as mentioned, visionary (so esoteric and noetic) topics were all broached with him one by one, and in depth, so his final decision as a high Shi'i Muslim cleric and jurisprudent was as the result of a sound and well-informed overall grounding on most facets of the question.

---

Many people view Islam as very backwards and obstructing of progressive change, and while I find this true on many fronts especially women's rights this is very interesting.  Here the grand Ayatollah is leading the religious as political world as being progressive.  After consulting numerous experts, scientific papers, anecdotal reports and etc he made a ruling base on logic and evidence as opposed to ideology. 

Is this a major event for the spread of psychedelics?  This just gave the go ahead to millions of people to try psychedelics to connect with god!

Why is this religious leader seemingly so much better at making just decisions based on evidence than all the other religions and even democratic governments?

---

redgreenvines said:

much of the thinking is capricious,
ok one day
not halal/kosher the next.

the views on the rights of women or the rights of jews provide a much more significant metric of modernity than the public stance on something less than 1% of the population will engage in (i.e. drugs used as entheogens).

personally I think that the view is uneducated and inconsistent in context of the general policy towards intoxicants of any kind.

I believe that Indian science was historically the most advanced, while Arab science was a bridge carrying the Indian findings to Italy and Spain (they were traders). Once the west caught up Science became the domain of the west. The Arabs were known as intrepid traders, and brave travelers by tradition; more stability is required for indigenous science to flower in a nation (India is home to probably the most enduring civilization on earth).

Right now we can begin to look at India (and China) again for a peek into the future, i.e. what is the next direction of humanity but it might not be good. Currently they both vastly outstrip the west in technological productivity, managing civic density, and rate of implementation of change.

Hearing about how advanced the Ayatolla's are gives me gas.

---

Quote:

Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili believes the modern scientific method was pioneered by Ibn Al-Haytham (known in the Western world as “Alhazen”), whose contributions he likened to those of Isaac Newton.[4] Alhazen helped shift the emphasis on abstract theorizing onto systematic and repeatable experimentation, followed by careful criticism of premises and inferences.[5] Robert Briffault, in The Making of Humanity, asserts that the very existence of science, as it is understood in the modern sense, is rooted in the scientific thought and knowledge that emerged in Islamic civilizations during this time.[6]

Muslim scientists and scholars have subsequently developed a spectrum of viewpoints on the place of scientific learning within the context of Islam, none of which are universally accepted.[7] However, most maintain the view that the acquisition of knowledge and scientific pursuit in general is not in disaccord with Islamic thought and religious belief.[1][7]

---

mice128 said:

Recent events notwithstanding, Islam has been a religion that fundamentally seeks to answer questions with science. Even before the Middle Ages Islamic scholars advanced medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and technology quite greatly. If you doubt this, simply look at the numbers on your keyboard. They are arabic numerals. Unfortunately, much knowledge was lost when the Great Library in Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongolians in the 16th century.

While I don't believe in god, I have a great respect for these Islamic scholars and I hope that that religion again becomes a beacon of hope in a science industry mostly driven by profit. With this, we would have a community of intelligent individuals motivated by their natural curiosity and love of life, and desire to grow both spiritually and physically. On another note, Islamic art is really neat. A lot of cool geometric designs, as well as really cool styles of architecture.

---

Quote:

The renowned mathematicians among the Ancient Greeks, who learned the fundamentals of their math from the Egyptians, did not have a name for zero, nor did their system feature a placeholder as did the Babylonian. They may have pondered it, but there is no conclusive evidence to say the symbol even existed in their language. It was the Indians who began to understand zero both as a symbol and as an idea.

Brahmagupta, around 650 AD, was the first to formalize arithmetic operations using zero. He used dots underneath numbers to indicate a zero. These dots were alternately referred to as 'sunya', which means empty, or 'kha', which means place. Brahmagupta wrote standard rules for reaching zero through addition and subtraction as well as the results of operations with zero. The only error in his rules was division by zero, which would have to wait for Isaac Newton and G.W. Leibniz to tackle.

---

Quote:

A complete history of mathematics of medieval Islam cannot yet be written, since so many of these Arabic manuscripts lie unstudied... Still, the general outline... is known. In particular, Islamic mathematicians fully developed the decimal place-value number system to include decimal fractions, systematised the study of algebra and began to consider the relationship between algebra and geometry, studied and made advances on the major Greek geometrical treatises of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, and made significant improvements in plane and spherical geometry.

An important role was played by the translation and study of Greek mathematics, which was the principal route of transmission of these texts to Western Europe. Smith notes:[3]

In a general way it may be said that the Golden Age of Arabian mathematics was confined largely to the 9th and 10th centuries; that the world owes a great debt to Arab scholars for preserving and transmitting to posterity the classics of Greek mathematics; and that their work was chiefly that of transmission, although they developed considerable originality in algebra and showed some genius in their work in trigonometry.

Adolph P. Yushkevich states regarding the role of Islamic mathematics:[4]

The Islamic mathematicians exercised a prolific influence on the development of science in Europe, enriched as much by their own discoveries as those they had inherited by the Greeks, the Indians, the Syrians, the Babylonians, etc.

HistoryEdit


"Cubic equations and intersections of conic sections" the first page of the two-chaptered manuscript kept in Tehran University
The most important contribution of the Islamic mathematicians was the discovery of algebra; combining Indian and Babylonian material with the Greek geometry to develop algebra.

Algebra
The study of algebra, which itself is an Arabic word meaning "reunion of broken parts",[5] flourished during the Islamic golden age. Al-Khwarizmi is, along with the Greek mathematician Diophantus, known as the father of algebra.[6] In his book The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing Al-Khwarizmi deals with ways to solve for the positive roots of first and second degree (linear and quadratic) polynomial equations.[7] He also introduces the method of reduction, and unlike Diophantus, gives general solutions for the equations he deals with.[6]

---

Cannashroom said:

Why is this religious leader seemingly so much better at making just decisions based on evidence than all the other religions and even democratic governments?

---

Cannashroom said:

It is funny how so many people are brainwashed about Islam.  Of course like all religions it has its terrible points, but it advanced scientific knowledge greatly in the past few thousand years.  It is an undeniable fact only the ignorant seem to deny.

From another thread...

mice128 said:

Recent events notwithstanding, Islam has been a religion that fundamentally seeks to answer questions with science. Even before the Middle Ages Islamic scholars advanced medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and technology quite greatly. If you doubt this, simply look at the numbers on your keyboard. They are arabic numerals. Unfortunately, much knowledge was lost when the Great Library in Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongolians in the 16th century.

While I don't believe in god, I have a great respect for these Islamic scholars and I hope that that religion again becomes a beacon of hope in a science industry mostly driven by profit. With this, we would have a community of intelligent individuals motivated by their natural curiosity and love of life, and desire to grow both spiritually and physically. On another note, Islamic art is really neat. A lot of cool geometric designs, as well as really cool styles of architecture.

---

Great point here,  we were influence so much by their math we still use their numerical system...

---

Deckard_Cain said:

Some Sufis dug up old writings and found that it seems there was ayahuasca use in the past... some are now going back to that tradition to use dmt in their aims to commune with Allah.

---

Cannashroom said:

Read the article, they use Syrian Rue mixed with DMT containing plants native to Iran, in a mixture called Haoma.

---

Quote:

Ancient Iranian religious tradition, involved the sacrifice of oxen, and the consumption of intoxicating drinks (haoma), leading like Dionysianism to orgies. Zoroaster did seem to condemn some form or forms of intoxication, but poppy eating in that part of the world, or even simply drunkenness might have been the target. Persians were not noted for drinking until Islamic times. Possibly Zoroaster actually banned the old style Iranian rituals accompanied by orgiastic and intoxicating rites. In other words, the use of sacrifice or haoma drinking to precede or accomapany orgies was banned, but not if used to show respect to Ahuramazda’s Good Creation. Such a reform is reminiscent of the reform of Dionysianism to Orphism—was Orphism once a form of Mazdayasnaism? The old haoma sacrifice apparently became a symbolic offering when the original intoxicating brew was replaced with an unfermented drink. The similarity with the Essenes’ attitude to wine is striking. Zoroaster retained the ancient cult of fire as symbolic of purity and righteousness. source

---

Cannashroom said:

Read the article, they use Syrian Rue mixed with DMT containing plants native to Iran, in a mixture called Haoma.

---