THREAD: After seeing some twitter users raising their concerns, it’s time for some additional explanatory information and points regarding Myanmar military that might come in handy in a few days. [1]
#WhatsHappeninglnMyanmar

Did the Prophet Muḥammad follow an Arabian religion or religiosity before Islam, that is, before what Muslim accounts label the "Call to Prophecy"? A short thread based on notes for an article preparation 1/

Biographical information about the life of Muḥammad before the Call to Prophecy is seriously lacking - even in the literary imaginations of later Muslim sources. But there are useful and relevant starting points which, if read critically, can add to our existing knowledge 2/

The best clue is found in the famous accounts recorded in the Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (Biography of the Messenger of God ) by the famous biographer Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767) - translated with additional notes (from Ibn Hishām; died 883) by Alfred Guillaume 3/

Ibn Isḥāq (in Ibn Hishām's recension) informs the reader that before the Call to Prophecy, Muḥammad used to sojourn (يُجَاوِرُ) on Mount Ḥirāʾ for a period of 30 days every year. During his meditative seclusion, Muḥammad would feed the poor & needy when they called on him 4/

The operative word in Ibn Hishām's biography is taḥannuth (تحنث). The term remains contentious both among medieval Muslim authorities and Western Islamicists. I decided to prepare an article on the term and its links to Late Antique religiosities largely because...5/

Why I am disgusted by the human species.

Speciesism Part 2: Marine Life

It is estimated that up to 3 trillion fish are caught from the wild & killed globally every year: This doesn’t include the billions of fish that are farmed. Fish account for 40% of animal products consumed

Fish farming is forecast to overtake wild-caught fish production in 2021: For context, farmed fish accounts for 70% of all farmed animals worldwide. This presents a host of problems. For example, shrimp farming has led to the destruction of three million acres of coastal wetlands

Like all captivity of sentient life fish farming is creating disease. This ends up in the wider ecosystem damaging and polluting wildlife.

Worldwide demand for seafood is expected to double in the next two decades A recent global survey in has estimated that we could see sea life vanish altogether by 2048. Due to the relentless fishing and relentless pollution. The corals are dying.

Whales:

Despite a moratorium on commercial whaling and a ban on international trade of whale products, three countries-Iceland, Japan, and Norway—continue their commercial whale hunts.
16,000 whales have been murdered every year for 83 consecutive years.

In what was United Bengal (modern day West Bengal+Bangladesh) back in 1941, Muslims were 56% of the population, and today they are approximately about 67% of the population. If you go back to the early 20th century or the late 19th century, Muslims weren't even a majority.

This

example of Bengal is what has been happening across the whole of the Indian sub-continent, albeit at a slower or faster pace as the case may be region to region, but the fact remains that the change has been unidirectional= As time goes by, the proportion of Muslims increases in

a given region and the proportion of Hindus goes down. Project the numbers out into 50 or 60 years and you have multiple states/regions of India with a Muslim plurality or outright majority. Project the numbers out to a century or so and it's difficult to argue how Hindus can

maintain cultural/political dominance in the long run. Some people like to say, "Oh well so what. Numbers don't matter, what have you achieved at 80% of the population which you're going to achieve at 90%!".

This is faulty thinking, because the direction of change itself is

the demgoraphic sense is quite critical of whether you are expanding or retreating civilisation. The more people you have relative to the enemy, the more the chances that you will adamant about taking over more territory. The less people you have relative to the enemy, the more